


it takes a dedicated hand (to put it through the wall)

by cashtastrophe



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Body Modification, Collars, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Demon Deals, Demonic Possession, Eldritch Bill Cipher, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Human Bill Cipher, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Masochism, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Pain, Porn, Protective Dipper Pines, Sadism, Self-Harm, Tentacles, kind of, unsafe use of safety pins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-02 05:26:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5235917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashtastrophe/pseuds/cashtastrophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't care what you do to me, just—you’ll leave them out of it. You'll make sure they're not implicated in whatever I have to do," Dipper grits out, his heart pounding a steady panic of <i>MabelMabelMABEL</i> in his throat at the thought of someone's grasping hands on his sweet, trusting sister. Pinning her. Hurting her. She’d cried for an hour last week because she’d accidentally left Waddles outside all night, despite it being a relatively comfortable sixty-five degrees, and Waddles looking no worse for the wear in the morning.</p><p> </p><p>Fuck.</p><p> </p><p>Bill doesn't say anything for several long, wrenching moments and Dipper is nearly ready to scream when he finally sticks out his hand, grins all the way back to his wicked-sharp canines and purrs, "Pine Tree, you've got yourself a deal."</p><p> </p><p>(an alternate timeline where Ford never showed up to validate Dipper's myriad of anxieties and the kid Does Not Cope. now feat. better summary)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you gotta wanna break the hearts of all those little porcelain dolls

**Author's Note:**

> Man, I'm so sorry about this. I was craving something where poor Dipper has a bad time, and Bill acts like an actual demon so...trash party. yeah.
> 
> Please see end of work for tags if triggers are a thing for you.
> 
> Otherwise, uh...enjoy?

It's never exactly _good_ , is the thing.

 

It's a process, every single _fucking_ time, a drawn-out negotiation between Dipper and his raging hormones and the thing in his head, Ol' Scratch and his single eye _skritch-scratching_ away at the epicenter of his nervous system at all the wrong times, sending warmth skittering into the pit of his belly while he's trapped, smile clipped and pasted on, behind the cash register for the seventh consecutive hour. 

 

(That might be unfair. He doesn’t _know_ that Bill is the devil. He doesn’t, after extensive research into the matter, even think the devil really exists—it’s just a bastardization of the Horned God, after all, a pathetic scramble to rebrand the pagan faith into cautionary tales for good Christian children. It’s likely that Bill is something much older.

 

Much more dangerous.

 

He _digresses.)_

 

He'd actually been bored ten minutes ago, nearly out of phone charge and sick of every game on the damn thing besides. Stupid. _Stupid_. How long has he been doing this? He should know better by now, than to let himself idle. Even his dreams are cracked, unsettling things—why would his daydreams be any different?

 

Like this, just a tiny passenger in the dusty corners of Dipper's awareness, Bill doesn't have fingers, strictly speaking. If he did, though, they'd be shoved into that little bundle of nerves tucked up inside inside of Dipper, prodding with near-clinical curiosity as Dipper bites into the inside of his cheek and eyes a pretty thirtysomething in a non-ironic wolf t-shirt browsing their collection of faux-vintage snow globes.

 

**_Carefu_** _l_ , Bill purrs and Dipper huffs out a low, (hopefully) quiet breath into the collar of his plaid shirt as something thick brushes the curve of his belly, slipslides lower. 

 

**_She might have some questions, Pine Tree, what kind of bullshit customer service is this?_** Something impossibly slick and cool slips around him, twining nimbly up the length of his cock like a grape vine, although his jeans stay neatly buttoned. He thanks whatever might be listening for the height of the register counter, despite the way his hips buck painfully into the hard edge of a shelf when Bill _squeezes_. **_You haven't even said hello, to her, kid._**

 

The loose coils of _whatever_ _those things are_ feel heavy with muscle, wet like the slick inside of Dipper's mouth, and they ripple threateningly around him when Dipper tries to speak and only coughs instead. He's abruptly glad he can't see what Bill is doing to him properly—even if he looked down, he doubted he'd see anything more than the humiliating line of his arousal pressed thick and swollen against his zipper. 

 

Although that would be enough, probably, to send this poor customer scurrying off to call the local authorities. Most of their clientele during the summer are children, after all, and Dipper is old enough, scruffy enough to look like more than a concern.

 

Hell, he'd probably call the cops in her situation. Maybe he should ask her to.

 

"Are these American-made?" Dipper's eyes snap open—when had he closed them?—and he blinks dazedly up at the redheaded woman, who had somehow approached the counter entirely without his noticing. She's got a snow globe in each hand and a slight frown on her face as she takes in Dipper's flushed brow, his heaving chest. 

 

"Asthma," he croaks and Bill chuckles darkly, reverberating through his jawbone, buzzing in his clenched teeth. It nearly sounds fond.  “Trying—trying to get off my inhaler. Sorry."

 

Her frown melts into one of sympathy, and in the process of avoiding eye contact, he notes dozens of tiny golden ornaments nestled in her dreadlocks, all these little thin rings with glittering stars attached. They're the exact same color as the pair of rings punched through her nose and the handful scattered along the shells of her ears, glinting bright against her dark skin. "Aw," she says and her voice is low, sibilant, lovely. "My son's got asthma too. It’s rough, I know.” She smiles at him then and he attempts a shaky copy back, wondering if his pupils are brown or gold at the moment. Wondering if she’s looking at his face enough to notice.

 

She's got fifteen years on Dipper, easy, but her eyes slip down to the curve of his throat anyways, eyeing the sharp line of his collarbone before it's interrupted by collar of his shirt. It’s so divorced from the shy, furtive way girls his own age look at him, their nervous laughs and flicks of their hair like the twitching of a unbroken pony's tail. This woman, though, she looks at him with the easy confidence of an apex predator. She knows she's beautiful. She knows he's young, and fumbling and near-desperate and she knows she could have him on his knees behind the desk without even really trying. Probably with the gift shop door still unlocked. In full view of the security camera. 

 

She knows he’s _beneath her_ and something catches, tight, in the back of his throat. 

 

**_GOD, you're textbook, Pine Tree. That's what gets your engine going? Tragic statutory situations?_** Bill drags his unwilling gaze to the soft slope of her cleavage, bared by the loose collar of her yoga top, and Dipper fights to screw his eyes shut when it lingers way past _appropriate_ and well into _forward_. 

 

Bill's got himself wrapped neat around Dipper's optic nerves or something, though, and he instead gets to tilt his eyes up to meet the customer's warm smile, now cut in two with a white gleam of teeth.

 

**_I'm twenty-two,_** Dipper snaps waspishly. **_Nearly,_** he amends when the coils slide to a stop in what is, he suppose, the invisible demon tentacle equivalent of a raised eyebrow. **_Just—just stop it, okay, I can't, this isn’t—_**

 

**_You could_** , Bill interrupts. **_If you wanted, you could._**

 

**_Are you controlling her?_** Dipper cries, finally—frantically—meeting her eyes. They're a rich molasses brown, though pupils blown wide and dark, but rounded. No sign of sharp teeth. No claws. No sign of _him_. 

 

But he must have looked normal, too, when Bill had worn him to Mabel's puppet show, right? His own twin hadn't even noticed.

 

**_Nah_** , Bill says. ** _Don't have to. She's just got a divorce, so, you know. Have at it, kid. Wanna know where else she's got piercings?_**

 

Dipper squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. "No!" he growls and the woman takes a step back, laughs nervously, like she's only just become aware that an employee of an out-of-the-way tourist trap in the middle of a lonely forest might not be the most balanced individual on the planet.

 

"'No' what?” she asks, shaky. “They're not American-made?"

 

Bill seems to have tired of the conversation, at this point, and resumes exploring the length of Dipper's cock with the nimble end of a coil instead, flicking gently at the tight underside of the head with slow, even laps. "No," Dipper husks out as the blunt width of another coil wraps itself crushingly tight around his thigh and pulls, nudging his legs apart. "No, they're absolute _shit_ , okay, they were make in like 2011 and they've just had the "made in China" logo painted over with some brass spray paint—now could you _please leave thank you, have a very nice day._ ”

 

The tiny bell over the door hasn’t even finished announcing her abrupt exit yet when Dipper—careful to contain it, careful of what it’ll look like on the security cameras, because it’s Mabel’s job to run through them on Tuesdays—curls into himself over the counter, buries his fingernails deep into the meat of his palms, and _howls_.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

It starts like this.

 

Well, hang on, no. That’s not right. It doesn’t really start like this. 

 

It ends like this. The end _begins_ like this.

 

Whatever.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

"So, what is it?"

 

Dipper very nearly whirls around before remembering _hang on, no_ —he’s still got his dick out and wrapped loose in the drunken curl of his fingers. He settles instead for slanting a glare over his shoulder and shifting to block himself better from the intruder's line of sight with his shoulders. Seriously, _seriously_ , fuck these scuzzy bars and their dim bathrooms—the graffiti alone is unnerving enough. Just from where he's standing, he can see at least three separate swatstikas without even needing to turn his head. "Look, man, I know it's late but I just needed to take a piss, I'm not looking for—“

 

“Shut it, Pine Tree," the guy interrupts and Dipper does turn this time, head snapping around to familiar cat-bright eyes and crooked grin on a stranger's face. 

 

Bill's wearing a scruffy white guy this time around, a barrel-chested, tattooed roadie type complete with faded Dead Kennedys shirt and "live young, die fast" inked sloppy across his knuckles. He's got a chipped front tooth and twin scars from healed snakebites, ears stretched around these godawful steel tunnels inset with grinning skulls. His hair is a dark, dirty attempt at a Mohawk, grown out shaggy and flopped over one side of his head, reaching nearly to his beard. From the pocket of his ragged leather jacket, Bill pulls a crushed pack of Newports and sticks one between his teeth. "This guy's gonna be a surgeon!” he explains brightly, rummaging around for a lighter, "and he KNOWS better, you know, but he'll pick up smoking in his twenties and never QUIIIIIIITE be able to kick the habit!” His voice echoes tinny, inhuman and unnerving in the tiny bathroom, prickling goosebumps all down Dipper’s arms.

 

"What do you want, Bill?” Dipper snarls, fingers of his free hand biting into the cheap plastic cup. He tucks himself away quickly and zips up, leveling a scowl at Bill as he passes him to the sink to wash his hands. The faucet sputters and coughs a weak stream of frigid water over his skin. "Did you just borrow the guy to give him lung cancer?"

 

“Emphysema, actually," Bill corrects absently, and in the mirror, Dipper can see Bill watching him, unblinking, still smiling as he fishes a scuffed Zippo from an interior pocket and lights his cigarette. He sucks in a drag and lets the smoke curl out slow from between his teeth in a way that suggests he knows _exactly_ the way Dipper’s eyes tend to snag on broad fingers clutched around cigarettes, on knobby wristbones and the practiced _schk_ of a lighter. ”And no, OBVIOUSLY, but what are you expecting me to do? Borrow a Girl Scout and volunteer at an orphanage? This guy was about to overdose." Bill tilts his vessel's head thoughtfully, a decidedly strange gesture from a creature seemingly without a neck. "I guess technically he DID overdose, SO! Emphysema or not, he gets fifty years he wouldn't have seen otherwise." He shrugs. "Why do you care? He made the deal, Pine Tree, not you."

 

"Would you have made the deal at all if he didn't just happen to be in this bar?" Dipper's stomach lurches in a way that has more to do with the fact that Bill hasn't actually blinked those mad, blank eyes yet than the three whiskey cokes he's anxiously downed in the last hour. "If he didn't happen to be near me?"

 

"Hmm. Nope! So I guess that's not misplaced guilt after all, kid—or maybe he's got you to thank, since he'll live a long, _loooooooooong_ unhappy life and die slowly and painfully over the course of a decade, while his medical treatment drains away any financial security his family had!" He chuckles and says, s _otto voce_ , "His teenage daughter will kill herself eventually so, you know. Not much you can do to bounce back from that, RIGHT?"

 

Dipper flinches. "I don’t—"

 

“Here’s the thing, actually," Bill interrupts, leaning over Dipper's shoulder to pluck his drink from the counter. He doesn't bother moving back once he’s captured his prize, opting instead to poise his considerable bulk over Dipper’s narrow shoulders and press the soft curve of his vessel's belly to Dipper's back. He takes a long, exaggerated sip of the drink, and makes a show of screwing up his face at the taste. "That is ACTUALLY TERRIBLE. Why do you do that to yourself? Whatever. UGH. Anyways,” he says, pushing the drink back into Dipper’s hand, “in about, oh, a minute and a half, your sister is going to finish a drink a VERY handsome stranger just bought her. And you'd be so proud of her, Pine Tree, cause she did everything right, and she watched the bartender make it. Hasn't put it down once—unlike SOME people,” he leers

 

Dipper makes a tiny, gutted noise and rears back against Bill, grabbing at the scuffed leather of his lapels. His drink falls to the dirty tile with the broken-glass cascade of ice spilling over his boots and he couldn’t care less. “What’s happening to Mabel?" he pleads. Oh god. Oh god, _no_ , they were only here because of him, she'd wanted to stay in and watch movies and, and he'd wheedled, guilted, because he's so fucking unpleasant to be around these days, he knows even Wendy would politely blow him off if he invited her to the show. 

 

He hadn't wanted to be alone, he’d been—he’d been so fucking _selfish_ and oh no, no, _Mabel_.

 

"Well, the thing she DOESN'T know is that the bartender and the handsome stranger have been best friends for ten years! Practically grew up together.” Bill snickers. “You should have seen what they did to the family cat when they were littler meatbags, oh MAN. I mean, how could she have guessed? And, you know Shooting Star, she got all nervous when faced with the possibility of GREAT BICEPS, and drank that thing like she'd been stranded in the desert for three days!" Bill hums contentedly. "Fifty seconds."

 

"What do you _want_?"

 

"I want to save Shooting Star from ten years of therapy and nightmares," Bill says, blinking up at Dipper, wide-eyed. "I want to make sure you don't have to go with her to the clinic to hold her hand because she's too embarrassed to tell anyone else." 

 

"What do you want," Dipper practically sobs. "Please, Bill, just _tell me what you want from me_."

 

"What do I want? Oh, nothing much--just your undying fealty for the rest of your natural life!” Bill chirps. "Don't care much what you do with your soul after. You'd be working for me, of course. Not all the time, it's not like some—well, it's a decent vacation benefits package is what I'm saying.”

 

"I won't kill anyone. I won't hurt anyone."

 

"Oh, no, no—you’ll definitely do _both_ of those things. Often. Eventually, with borderline enthusiasm!" Bill narrows his eyes like a cat, letting them flag lazy to half-mast. Dipper is seized with the insane urge to smash his stupid, smug face into the steel sink until he stops smiling. "THIRTY SECONDS!”

 

"You don't make me hurt anything or anyone I care about. In _any_ way. I don't care what you do to me, just—you’ll leave them out of it. You'll make sure they're not implicated in whatever I have to do," Dipper grits out, his heart pounding a steady panic of _MabelMabelMabel_ in his throat at the thought of someone's grasping hands on his sweet, trusting sister. Pinning her. _Hurting_ her. She’d cried for an hour last week because she’d accidentally left Waddles outside all night, despite it being a relatively comfortable sixty-five degrees, and Waddles looking no worse for the wear in the morning.

 

Fuck. _Fuck_.

 

Bill doesn't say anything for several long, wrenching moments and Dipper is nearly ready to scream when he finally sticks out his hand, grins all the way back to his wicked-sharp canines and purrs, "Pine Tree, you've got yourself a fucking _deal_."

 

Dipper shakes the demon's hand without any hesitation, and it's around that point he stops breathing.

 

Nothing happens. 

 

He waits. Exhales. Inhales. Repeats. Bill shifts uncomfortably in his grip. "Is...was that it?" Dipper asks. His voice cracks on the last word. 

 

Bill frowns. "What were you expecting, kid? A goddamn carriage ride and a candlelit dinner?" He snaps his fingers and suddenly, something whip-thin, white-hot, _blistering_ constricts tight around Dipper's throat, wrenching a low, startled groan from between clenched teeth.

 

He claws at it, desperate to separate the searing metal from his skin, doesn’t even think about the way it might burn his hands, he’s so frantic to have it _off_ when suddenly the pain is just—gone. The absence of sensation is so absolute, so sudden, that he actually stumbles forward half a step.

 

Bill catches him by the elbow before he falls. "Easy, boy. Probably should have warned you about that one, huh." He tuts, entirely unconvincing, and ruffles Dipper's hair in exactly the same way Stan used to, which sends something creepy-crawling up Dipper's spine, an unsettling echo of _I'm always watching_ in the base of his skull. "You're fine, kid, come on. Stand up."

 

"Mabel," Dipper pants, still feeling at his throat for what felt like, like—molten piano wire, choking and burning and impossibly painful for something that didn't seem to actually exist. "Is she—“

 

Bill waves a dismissive hand. "She's fine. Guy had an aneurysm in the staff bathroom while he was getting himself in the mood. His buddy’ll find him in an hour. She didn't even see it."

 

"The roofie?" There's a thin band of what almost feels like old scar tissue where the pain had been. Dipper maps it with the pads of his fingers, turning to examine his throat in the pitted mirror. 

 

He can't see anything, though. No mark, no visible flaw, not even the raised edges he's feeling unless he really squints at it. 

 

Bill heaves a dramatic sigh, snaps his fingers again. Dipper flinches, automatic, but nothing hurts this time. Instead, Bill offers him a round white pill held flat in the palm of his hand. "The only thing in her blood is the Mai Tais he's been feeding her." He eyes Dipper's hands at his neck, amused, as though he's expecting another question. "She's okay, Pine Tree. Really," he says, when he's greeted only with silence.

 

Dipper drops his head and _breathes,_ a deep, shuddering sigh of relief. She's okay. Mabel's okay. A man is dead tonight because of Dipper, but that man was a monster and Mabel's _okay_ and he can't bring himself to care much about anything else at the moment. That, and of course—

 

"About the deal," Dipper starts, but when he looks up, he's alone in the dimly-lit bathroom. No sign of Bill. No sign, actually, that Bill had ever even been there save for the watered-down Jack pooled at Dipper’s feet. He checks his reflection again, thumbs the band of scar tissue and nearly jumps out of his skin when his phone buzzes in his pocket. His usual ringtone has been replaced with the opening bars of the _X-Files_ theme song, because Mabel thinks she's hilarious.

 

He scrambles to dig it out, fingers shaking too badly to key in his passcode the first two times. "Mabel!"

 

"Where you at, Dip-Dop?" His sister's normally-sunny voice sounds blurry and almost sad. "I got ditched by the guy and this band sucks _out loud_. Can we go home and watch bad horror movies?"

 

She sounds so—fine. Like nothing has happened, just another bump in the roadmap of her minor rejections and he has to take a second to breathe. Reminds himself that as far as Mabel is concerned, nothing _had_ happened.  

 

"Dipper?" She sounds concerned now, a little bit more awake. He can actually picture the tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows and there’s such a rush of affection for her in his chest that he might choke on it—that would explain the sounds he’s biting back, anyways. "Are you okay? Where are you? Did you have another attack? I thought you were just going to pee?"

 

"I am. I was," he says quickly. “I’m, I’m fine. Just, uh, drank too much I think. Got sick."

 

"Aw, boo." She says and blows him a raspberry. "I'll stop and buy you some greasy diner food if we can go home now."

 

"Yeah." He scrubs his free hand over his eyes and takes one last, sweeping look at the empty bathroom. One last look at the bare, pale column of his throat. "Yeah, home sounds good.”

 

And it does. It sounds so good it’s actually unreal.

 

Still, as he climbs into the passenger seat of the pink abomination Mabel calls a truck, he can’t help rubbing at the slim line around his throat and wondering if the lingering ache is just his imagination.

 

 

 


	2. you gotta wanna be the drummer in a band, you gotta wanna be a battering ram

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you thought it got better, it didn't.
> 
> Dipper's a total mess, Bill's The Worst, Stan's out of the loop, and Mabel is a sweet angel sent by the heavens, precious cinnamon bun too pure for this world.
> 
> As always, unbeta'd and English is not my first language. Please point out mistakes that bug you, cause they'd probably bug me too.
> 
> (sorry again for this just, ugh, angst mess--it's supposed to hurt, right?)
> 
>  
> 
> (see end notes for updated tags)

, 

 

 

The next morning, Dipper's half-asleep, blearily choking down a breakfast of Mabel's special brand of far-too-sweet chocolate pancakes, when Bill chooses to make it abundantly fucking clear that the previous night was not, as he’d fervently hoped, a nightmare.

 

If the scar on his throat is at all obvious, no one's said anything yet. Dipper's fairly sure neither his sister nor his great-uncle is truly capable of anything approaching tact, so it's possible that he's the only one that can even tell it's there. 

 

He can't quite manage to relax, though, not with Bill perched in his favored triangle form on the slope of Dipper's thigh, his hat just brushing the underside of the table. Dipper watches both Stan and Mabel out of the corners of his eyes, desperate for any sign that they can see him too, or perhaps hear the off-kilter rendition of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" he's been humming for the last few minutes as he happily slides the dull point of a safety pin through the tender flesh between Dipper's forefinger and thumb. 

 

He'd found them in the bottom of Dipper's old backpack that morning, and apparently been charmed by the paradox of an object that was supposed to simultaneously be both pointy and safe. He'd staunchly refused to let Dipper throw them out, and really, he probably should have suspected something when Bill secreted them away in the coin pocket of Dipper's jeans. 

 

Dipper racks his brain for a distraction. He tries to remember where the safety pins had first come from, how old they were, how rusted they might be. He wasn't exactly the cleanest person in the world—who knew what had been rolling around the bottom of that backpack? When was the last time he had even had a tetanus shot? Had he _ever_ had a tetanus shot? How could he feasibly get one without causing himself further injury? What was it—lockjaw, that was serious, right, he could actually die of that and oh _fuck_ why did he even keep the safety pins in the first place?

 

"Don't worry," Bill croons from his lap. "We can always step on a nail later!” He pauses. “They'll give you a shot for that, right?"

 

Stan is busy scowling at the Lifestyle section of a two-day old newspaper, and Mabel is totally engrossed in recreating some complex floral pattern in whipped cream on her own plate. She tops an impressive recognizable cabbage rose with a garnish of maraschino cherry. Neither of them so much as look up at the sound of Bill's voice. 

 

Dipper's hand throbs dully in four separate places now where the pins have been shoved through the top few layers of skin, just enough to hurt, not quite enough to bleed noticeably. He doesn't flinch though, not even when Bill finishes with his thumb and moves on to the tender center of his palm.

 

_Just let him get it over with_ , he snaps at himself, without bothering to worry about whether Bill can hear. _He's almost done. Just let him get it over with._

 

Past the initial insertion of the pin, it doesn't even hurt that badly—and that's probably only because it's on his hands, right, all those nerve endings sitting so close to the surface. It isn't a serious injury. Some peroxide, a few band-aids and a pull from Stan's "hidden" flask behind the TV stand, and he'll be just fine. 

 

Bill has been very careful to clip the pins all neatly closed, and Dipper supposes he should be somewhat grateful for that, at least, grateful that he doesn't snag himself on the tablecloth as he drags his wounded hand further into the shelter of his lap. 

 

_They aren't serious. You're fine, you're_ fine _._

 

Panic prickles a cold sweat on the back of his neck anyways, and he counts just like his doctor taught him,  _onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight_. Inhales. He breathes through his nose, measuring in a fumbling eight-count, and tries to plan an escape route that will both get him out of the room quickly and conceal his right hand from notice. 

 

There's blessed quiet from Bill once he's fastened the fifth pin. Dipper can feel his tiny hands resting reverently on a hot, throbbing point where metal enters his palm. He does a quick mental tally and lets himself relax half a degree when he realizes Bill's (finally) run out of pins.

 

Dipper's stomach rumbles, reminding him that he hasn't put anything non-alcoholic in it for over twelve hours. He risks another bite of the pancakes as minute fingers stroke gently, carefully alongside the most recent piercing. Bill is admiring his handiwork.

 

"It doesn't have to HURT, you know," Bill remarks. There's a brief-but-awful itching in his throat, begun and finished within the span of a breath. The pulse of blood in his ears fades as though a dimmer switch has been turned, replaced by a cooling numbness in his mutilated fingers. Something hot thrums in his chest, a strange, rumbling feedback loop of Bill's own contentment at his completed task. Dipper sighs gratefully as Bill continues to pet him and the pain ebbs, ebbs, ebbs into sweet nothing.

 

_You're fine._ He takes a shaky breath. _You're_ fine.

 

"What," Bill simpers, and it sounds almost jovial, but his eye is narrowed up at Dipper from under the ledge of the table. "That's all the thanks I get?"

 

Dipper chews the sticky mouthful without really tasting it and doesn't bother answering. Stan (probably wisely) has opted to skip the Mabelcakes this morning in lieu of a large mug of pitch-black coffee, and was uncharacteristically thoughtful enough to pour Dipper a cup. It's on his bad side, though, so he occupies himself with staring the coffee down, trying to figure out how he can pick up the mug with his left hand while making it look at all natural—and then Bill's tiny hands take firm hold of a closed pin and rip it clean out of his palm. Straight through the skin.

 

_He's stronger than he looks in that little form_ , Dipper notes, dizzy.

 

The dimmer switch immediately slams all the way back up to eleven, and Dipper drops his fork onto his plate with an alarmingly loud _chink_ of metal on stonewear.

 

Dipper actually _felt_ the wet splitting of his flesh, the hot welling of blood in the reservoir of his cupped palm, but he doesn't so much as whimper. He vaguely thinks he might be proud of that. He's vaguely aware he _shouldn't_ be proud of that. Granted, he nearly bit through his tongue, but he doesn't make a single goddamn sound, even though the pit of his stomach's dropped to somewhere around the vicinity of his knees,  like he's just crested the highest curve of a roller coaster.

 

All his stupid, bleary brain manages to come up with is "Slipped. S-sorry,” when Stan arches an eyebrow at him over the folded-down top of his newspaper.

 

"Don't worry. You'll grow into your limbs eventually, kid," Stan says. "Probably," he amends, with a fond punch to Dipper's shoulder before returning to his intense perusal of what looks upsettingly like the obituaries page. 

 

In his lap, Bill places the freed pin carefully into his palm where that slick of blood now pools warm-wet around the demon's feet. Bill kicks at it experimentally, like a child might splash a puddle on the sidewalk and for a horrible moment Dipper thinks he might actually jump into it. Thankfully, he seems to tire of the game quickly, instead patting Dipper consolingly on the joint of his trembling thumb.

 

**_One down,_** he offers helpfully. ** _Four to go._**

 

"Not hungry, Dip?"

 

Dipper blinks and looks up at his sister, his eyes undoubtedly red and wet, praying he just looks as exhausted as he feels. Prays she can't tell, that she's not looking for it still, after all these years. "Uh," he says dumbly and drops his gaze to his plate, where two pancakes still sit, gone soggy with syrup and missing only a small chunk from the side. She's drawn a smiley face on his, with strawberries for eyes, though the heat has melted the whipped cream into a wobbly mess. "Nah. Not, uh, not feeling great."

 

**_Come on, she went to all that effort for you!_** Bill slides the next pin—shoved horizontal through the pad of Dipper's middle finger—agonizingly back and forth a few times. **_You're not going to be RUDE, are you?_**

 

It's a big goddamn pin, an oversized one that Mabel had given him to tack a Mystery Shack patch to his backpack before he'd sewed it on properly. Bill's only sunk about a quarter of it beneath Dipper's skin, leaving himself nearly half an inch of room to slowly, slowly drag the metal through. Dipper can practically feel the blood drain from his face at the unsettling sensation.

 

**_Take a bite,_** Bill hisses and Dipper tries, _God_ , he tries to pick up his fork and stop shaking long enough to obey, but he only manages one of the strawberry eyes before he gags. The seeds may as well be sand between his teeth.

 

"Are you sick?" Mabel tilts her head and squints at him, like she's looking for an angle from which he might begin to make sense. She looks at him like that a lot, lately. “You’re--kinda grey, actually."

 

"No," he grinds out. “Just—Ididn't sleep well.  Allergies, probably."

 

Stan makes an understanding noise at that. "All that damn ragweed. It's been getting to me for weeks," he offers, jerking a thumb at the open window, as if to implicate the whole of the outdoors. "I'll pick you up something at the drugstore while I'm out. Allegra still working for you?"

 

"Yeah. Thanks," Dipper bites out. Stan grunts in acknowledgement and pushes his chair back, cracking his back as he gets up to shuffle out of the kitchen. 

 

Dipper watches his great-uncle—painfully slow, but the man's in his seventies now, and Dipper's being unkind—retrieve his jacket from the front hall and vanish out the door with a fond "Try not to burn the place down, will ya?”

 

**_Stop it,_** he pleads as the old station wagon sputters to life outside, and Bill chuckles gently. Thrums that feedback loop into his mind again, and it’s—Christ, it's _overwhelming_ , like shoving a lightning bolt under his skin, like swallowing a nuclear reactor. Like a hive of hornets in his chest, buzzing right into his marrow. 

 

He doesn't know _what_ it is. Doesn't have a name for it. Mental arousal, maybe, could be what Bill feels in these moments with his complete lack of a real body, but it shivers through him like the cold rippling up to the sun-warm surface of a tide pool after a rock’s thrown in. He feels like he could be drowning in it, faint, muzzy, like he might not be breathing, and It _hurts_. Of course it still hurts.

 

He just—with the way Bill's practically vibrating against his every nerve ending, with the way it hooks not-entirely-unpleasantly at this spot right below the pit of his belly, it doesn't exactly _just_ hurt anymore.

 

“Why, Pine Tree," Bill crows in a mocking falsetto, a high-pitched southern drawl as a tiny finger slips into the closest hole in Dipper's skin and _twists_. "I had NO IDEA!” 

 

**_Shut up_** , Dipper pleads, face flushing as Mabel continues to frown at him, her floral breakfast creation abandoned. **_Shut up, you said you'd leave them out of it, you said—!_**

 

"I," Bill says, utterly affronted, "am not trying to _involve them_ in anything. YOU’RE the one praying that someone will actually pay attention to you for once in your pathetic life! Do you really want to lay all this on her, Pine Tree? I thought the point was protecting her, but hey—ball’s in YOUR court, tiger!"

 

Dipper makes a noise at that without quite meaning to, this pitiful, strangled kind of whimper like he's been kicked. Mabel's head snaps up at the sound and she flicks her soft, short curls out of her face. She's just opened her mouth to ask if he's okay, probably, when he feels something warm rolling down his fingertip to dangle there for a beat and then—“Diiiiiip," she says slowly, craning her neck to look down at her bare toes, "are you...dripping onto my foot?"

 

Bill laughs, this awful, high-pitched discordant thing, like a bow drawn sharp over the strings of an out-of-tune violin, and promptly vanishes in a puff of blue flame. 

 

Dipper closes his eyes and tries his very hardest to swallow down his meager breakfast as it threatens a reappearance.

 

“Dipper…” Mabel insists, and there's that awful softness to her voice again, the kind he hasn't heard since those long months the year they'd turned seventeen. Hasn't heard since after—

 

Well, since after the clinic had cleared him for release to the custody of his parents. Since they'd decided (after nine months of humiliating deliberation) to keep up the twins’ summer tradition of visiting Gravity Falls, although Dipper vanished into the attic twice a week for Skype sessions with a doctor he refused to call by name. 

 

They hadn't told Stan. They were supposed to tell Stan—

 

_(we're trusting you to do this in your own time, but you'd better text us once a day at the very least or you and Mabel are on the next flight home, mister)_

 

—and Dipper had _tried_ , he really had, but every time he even came close, his jaw snapped itself shut like the doors of a panic room. Every time, he had to count himself down in those stuttering eight-beats. Mabel would have done it if he'd asked but she was so gentle with him that summer, so hesitant to push him, a constant, unnervingly quiet presence as though she was afraid Dipper might disappear if she didn't keep constant watch. 

 

(He pretended that's what she was afraid of, but he knew better.)

 

She was downright sweet to him that whole summer through. She didn't argue with him over the remote, even when they edged into the double digits of old _Ghost Harassers_ reruns, or insist he keep his half of the attic clean. Didn't even protest when Dipper staunchly refused any trip to the lake or the swimming pool, though the girl loved water like she'd been born to it. She just sat indoors with her brother in quiet solidarity, though Stan had caught her throwing wistful looks outside when she thought Dipper was otherwise occupied. 

 

Stan hadn't understood her tiptoeing at the time. Why would he? He'd long accustomed himself to their affectionate bickering, and after four years of it, Dipper can see why the absence might be downright jarring. Stan particularly hadn't understood why his sister's newfound mother-henning was met with bristling hostility from Dipper. 

 

He'd known it was unfair then and he knows it now, but—

 

He _hates_ it when she's gentle with him. He hates the reminder that there's something brittle

 

( ** _broken it's broken who do you think you're kidding there, bucko?_** )

 

about him in the first place. 

 

"That looks an awful lot like blood, man. You're kind of freaking me out."

 

"Sorry," he croaks, and ducks his head. He can't look at her. Something soft and warm curls soothingly around the back of his neck, flexing an impossible number of slick muscles and he shudders at the caress.”I—sorry."

 

She doesn't say anything for a moment, opting to gnaw on her lower lip instead and it's so achingly familiar, he could cry. When she reaches out to touch his arm, she's careful to keep her hands where he can see them, palms open and out, like he's a skittish horse. 

 

He knows her sweet, round face like he knows the mirror reflection of his own; he's seen this in her before. This is Mabel luring a feral cat out of a dumpster. This is Mabel befriending a stray dog. This is Mabel wrapping her hands in canvas and two layers of garden gloves to pry the frothing, panicked fox's trapped paw from the ragged hole in the wire fence surrounding the Shack, though it won’t do more than snap at her for her troubles. She gentles him like he's not her brother, but a wild animal. Like he's _unpredictable_. Like he might really hurt her.

 

It's completely fair. It's smart, in fact, because he's been hospitalized for the very crime of _posing a threat to himself or others_ , but it still makes him sick. 

 

"Can I see?" she finally asks, curling lime-green fingernails around his elbow. "Super-pinky-promise I won't tell Grunkle Stan if you let me patch it up. I won't even call Mom and Dad."

 

Dipper eyes her suspiciously from behind the fringe of his bangs. "You won't?"

 

Mabel sighs. "You'll have to let me check you," she says quickly. "Just until it heals! And if I don't see any more by then—yeah, Dip, I won't tell him. Everyone has relapses, right? He doesn't need to know. As long as," she fumbles, fluttering her hands vaguely in the air. "As long as you're not still, you know, _doing it._ You know?"

 

She says it like it's a compromise—and it _is_ , the rational part of him knows, there's a clear logic in making him accountable to his sister when he apparently can't be accountable to himself—but he can't manage to make himself think of it as a kindness. 

 

She _should_ call their parents. She _should_ tell Stan. She shouldn't make herself solely responsible for her deranged brother, but she's his best friend in the world and she knows the way shame looks on the curl of his skinny shoulders under a roughly-laundered set of hospital scrubs. She remembers the way he didn't look at her directly for weeks after, opting instead to hold a staring contest with the Velcro closures of his shoes.

 

"We can't have laces here," he said dully  when she asked. "Medication makes it hard to tie them anyways." They couldn't have hats either, apparently, and when she'd tried to smooth his matted hair down over the birthmark he'd always hated, he'd only glanced up at her for a second before resuming his task of picking mechanically at the skin around his nails. "It doesn't matter anymore, Mabes. I don't care who sees."

 

His wrists, she kindly didn't point out, he was always very careful to keep covered.

 

She didn't tell him she'd cried herself to sleep in their shared bedroom that night, but the next morning, when she turned up with a huge pack of soft-tipped markers (“Can’t have _pencils_ ,” he’d snarled vicious at her, when she’d tried to bring him a sketchbook) unfamiliar circles bruised beneath her eyes, she hardly needed to. 

 

He should be grateful for the offer, and he knows it, but all he can think about is the months after the hospital. 

 

About the determined set of his father's jaw, because Dipper was old enough that it wasn't _quite_ proper for this task to fall to his mother. He remembers the brilliant flush of shame burnt across his cheeks, the flaming tips of his ears as he shrugged his skinny body out of his button-down and Dad's flat, dispassionate  _let me see your arms, son, hold them out, there you go, don't make this any harder than it has to be._

 

He thinks about the way Dad was careful not to touch him, after. A brief hug for his graduation from high school, a handshake for college and maybe a half dozen warm pats on the back which—he doesn't _blame_ the man, exactly. He can't.

 

He'd been the one to find Dipper, after all. He'd been the one to expertly tourniquet his son's arms at the elbow instead of panicking. He'd been the reason that Dipper had lost a some nerve function in his forearms, but not his stupid life.

 

When he’s—not _better_ , but better than he was, when he can think again without the fog of _what's even the point of this, what's the point of me,_ he's appalled by what he'd done to his father. When he's old enough to have real context, when he can think past his own selfishness, when he understands that losing a child is about the worst thing than can happen to a person, he'll understand his father's distance.

 

An open wound scars over for protection, right? So the next time, it doesn't hurt so badly. Doesn’t cause so much damage.

 

It makes sense.

 

Only this time, instead of Dad's cool disinterest, it'll be his sister's wicked, conspirational grin swapped out for wounded doe eyes and remembering never to raise her voice around him. It'll be sharp objects locked away in a cabinet only she's got the key to, and a little blue pill appearing by his breakfast plate every morning. It'll be her carefully screening their movie nights for anything that might leave her pathetic brother an even more pathetic, shivering mess.

 

It'll be a diluted version of her, watered down, walking on eggshells for the sake of his fragile fucking psyche. It'll be—Jesus, it'll be _her_ helping him unbutton his shirt when his hands are shaking too bad to manage, and _her_ pressing soft fingertips to a bruise on his leg and pleading _you just fell, right, that's all this was?_ It'll be _her_ subtly checking his wrists when he rolls up his sleeves, and _her_ slipping ointments and heavy concealers into their shopping basket when she thinks he's not looking.

 

The thought of Mabel abridged like that for anyone, least of all him, makes him ache so fiercely that he clenches both hands into fists before he remembers. 

 

**_NICE!_** Bill clicks what passes for his tongue. ** _Only two to go._**

 

"Dip," Mabel breathes. "Honey, you're shaking. Dipper? Dip, hey, can you hear me?"

 

He shakes his head once, jerkily, and slams his open hand down onto the table, startling Mabel and rattling what's left of the breakfast plates. He smears the tablecloth with a bright red palm-print that he'll frantically scrub at later, when he's coherent enough to realize exactly what questions it might raise. He grimaces as his hand meets the solid wood of the dining table and the _thing_ curled around his neck gives a delighted ripple-shiver.

 

He carefully doesn't look at it, lying limp on the table as though it's come detached from his arm, carefully doesn't look at _her_ as her small hands reach slow for his bloodied one.

 

She doesn't say anything for a long time as she studies his fingers. She curls them, uncurls, checks that he can move them all properly. She doesn't say anything as she blots gently at his wounds with a wetted dishcloth until she's cleaned away most of the mess.

 

"This one will need stitches," she offers finally. He's overwhelmingly grateful that her first words are practical ones; he doesn't know quite what to do with sympathy at this point. "And, uh. We'll definitely need to take the last two out." She touches one—hooked deep through the web between ring finger and pinky—and he hisses. "Sorry," she murmurs. "We can go to the hospital, if you'd prefer. They can probably, like, give you a painkiller or something."

 

_They'll sedate you,_ she means, _they'll sedate you because you've done something insane again and that's how they handle crazy people._

 

"No! No hospitals," Dipper's grinding his teeth just thinking about the exasperated way the nurses will look at him— _waste of their time_ , they're thinking, _selfish_ , they're thinking, _there's a six-year-old kid slowly fading three halls over, and here_ ** _this_** _punk is, throwing away a perfectly healthy body,_ they're thinking. 

 

They aren't wrong.

 

He can practically see the weary downward curl to his mother's mouth and the damning way his doctor had scrawled **SELF-INFLICTED** in bold capitals across the bottom of his chart. "No. You do it. Stan's got to have something hidden around for the pain."

 

Mabel looks at him for a long moment then asks, hesitant, "Weren't you just...pulling them out yourself?

 

_I wasn't doing anything,_ Dipper almost says, because sure, he deserves this but he doesn't deserve _this_. The itching in his throat returns with a vengeance before he manages so much as a sound and he starts to cough instead, great, wet, wracking coughs that barely let him catch his breath in between.

 

**_Ah ah ah,_** Bill says as Mabel hurries to fetch him water. ** _What was it you said? Keep them out of it? I'm afraid it won't be keeping up my end of the bargain if Shooting Star gets involved, and I am an abomination of my word._**

 

**_But this is keeping it?_** Dipper rages as he fights for breath past the maddening sensation in his throat. **_Making her think I'm sick again? How exactly does that keep her out of it?_**

 

**_Pine Tree,_** Bill says sweetly. ** _Didn't you hear what she said? People relapse all the time. I didn't exactly make you like this, you know._**

 

A beat and then—

 

**_I know,_** Dipper thinks miserably

 

**_You were born this way. Right out the gate. Much as you're a cosmic joke, this is nothing more than a shitty card in your stupid genetic lottery—you should probably blame your parents, if anything!_ **

 

**_I_ know. **

 

And just like that, completely without Dipper's input, his left hand moves to take hold of the first pin and give it a fond little tweak. Another red blossom of pain streaks across Dipper's vision before Bill rips the thing out as easily as if it were pinned into rice paper.

 

Another warm hum of contentment at the base of his spine follows, bleeding into his pelvis like he's sinking into a warm bath. His hand is blessedly numb to the way Bill presses a thumbnail into the new wound and licks curiously at the resulting mess.

 

Mabel makes it back into the room just in time to watch Bill take hold of the last pin between Dipper's front teeth and _twist_ until it pops free of his hand with a soft, wet sound. 

 

The glass of water _thunks_ to the carpet. "Dipper!"

 

"They're out," Bill says in Dipper's own trembling voice. He sounds like he's trying not to be sick. "Mabel, lookit, I got them out like, like you said." 

 

Dipper could have lived a long and happy life never _ever_ knowing Bill was capable of that.

 

"Yeah," Mabel says slowly, eyes trained on the collection cupped in the palm of his hand. She pales as she recognizes the cheery smiling flower affixed to the largest as one of her own. "Yeah, how about—how about we don't talk about that and you let me clean that up instead, huh?" 

 

Bill's hands shake when he holds them out to Mabel, and his voice wobbles gratefully as he says, "I didn’t—I didn't _mean_ to—Mabel, Mabes, I'm so sorry—“

 

"Hey, hush. Hush. It's okay, Dip." She steers him up the stairs, down the hall and to the edge of the bathtub where Bill perches, obedient. He holds out Dipper's hand when she pats an empty spot on the countertop.

 

**_Oh, Pine Tree,_** Bill murmurs appreciatively when Mabel shoves up the cuff of Dipper's shirtsleeve and he 

 

_(finally)_  

 

sees the silvery knot of scar tissue marring the pale skin. He twists Dipper's other wrist around while Mabel busies herself hunting down their extensive first aid kid, and actually _giggles_ when he discovers a matching stripe on the other side. **_Look at you! I'm so PROUD! Down the road, even, not across—you don’t fuck around, kid, and I respect that! All this fuss over lil' ol' me?_**

 

**_Shut up,_** Dipper pleads as Mabel returns with a bottle of peroxide and a heavy tackle box of supplies. **_Don't act like you didn't know._**

 

Bill only laughs.

 

"We still may need to get you a tetanus shot later, but we miiiiiiight be able to skip the stitches," she says by way of apology as she holds Dipper's hand over the sink. "I found some butterfly bandages that might work if you don't use the hand too much. And, uh, feel free to let go of _those_ at any time."

 

Bill tilts his hand obediently and deposits the pins into Mabel's waiting palm. Dipper tries not to pay too much attention to the fact that she rinses them off and pockets them, rather than risk leaving them in the trash. "This is probably going to hurt."

 

She upends the bottle over Dipper's ragged hand without any further warning. Dipper braces himself.

 

It... _doesn't_.

 

"Oh man," Mabel says, wide-eyed. "I, wow, I _really_ wish you wouldn't keep smiling when I do that."

 

Bill kicks his heels against the tub and hums. "What would you prefer I do?"

 

"I don't know." Mabel hoists the tackle box onto the closed toilet and rummages through it, retrieving a pack of medical gauze that she tosses to Dipper. "Wince? Cry? React in any way? Some of those looked like they were in there pretty deep."

 

Bill catches the gauze deftly with his bad hand. Mabel shudders. 

 

"Jesus _Christ_ , Dip."

 

"What?" Bill asks innocently, tearing the paper packet open with his teeth. He lets Dipper handle mopping up the hydrogen peroxide, but it's Bill who levels hi glare at her, Bill who sneers, "Am I supposed to avoid talking about this because it makes you _uncomfortable_ , Mabel? Do you—what, do you think I like it? You think I enjoy being this way? You think this is, this is _easy for me,_ I—“

 

Bill gives a perfect imitation of the choked, furious noise Dipper makes when words have utterly failed him. There are even tears in his eyes.

 

Give the man(?) an Oscar.

 

"No," Mabel says hurriedly, kneeling between Dipper's socked feet. She takes hold of his wrists, wrapping her hands over the ugly marks like it somehow doesn't disgust her to touch them. "Dipper, _no_ , of course I don't. I just—“ she shakes her head, helpless. "I don't know what to _do_ when you say things like that! I don't know what I'm supposed to say. I don't want you to—and I don't, I mean, I understand it all _theoretically_ but—“ She bites her lip. "I love you, Dipper, I just don't understand you when you get like this. I'm sorry."

 

Bill lets her wrap her arms around Dipper’s lax body. He lets her bury her face in the worn cotton of his shirt. He even runs Dipper's good hand through her hair a few times, making the appropriate comforting noises. "I know," he tells her softly. "It's okay, Mabel, I'm sorry, I know."

 

In the mirror, though, over Mabel's shoulder, Bill's mad grin stretches Dipper's face into something hungry, something fierce, something completely unrecognizable.

 

“I love you too,” Dipper's mouth says. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unnecessarily detailed description of violence, torture (?), weird hand stuff, emotional manipulation, discussion of involuntary hospitalization, discussion of mental illness, suicide, self-mutilation, Real Poor Handling of Mental Illness on All Fronts. Unsafe use of safety pins. Gaslighting? Emotional masochism? Is that a thing?
> 
> I'm rly obsessed w the mythology that demons are attracted to the mentally ill tbh it's not my fault i was raised catholic


	3. you gotta see the artistry in tearing the place apart with me, baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the first time it happens goes like this:
> 
> (poor kid can't catch a break)

The first time it happens is roughly twenty minutes after Mabel parks Dipper in his darkened bedroom room with strict instructions to _rest, for God's sake, Dip_.

 

She paces outside his door for a while, and eventually pads back downstairs to make a phone call to, he assumes, one of her friends. He's never asked Mabel if they know. Never had to. They tell him with the way they watch him sometimes when they think he’s not looking.

 

 ** _Will you SHUT UP? You snivel like a CHILD, Pine Tree,_** Bill hisses once he's twisted the lock to Dipper's bedroom door shut. Bill's voice is relatively flat, almost quiet, but bears no trace of its typical hollow amusement, its usual morbid humor, no trace of anything but thick black venom and the way his disappointment sinks into Dipper's bones like they're being filled slowly with lead.

 

It's _fair_ , alright, because he is crying, but in his defense he's being as unobtrusive about it as he can. Doesn't make a sound even as he shakes, even as his breath hitches uneven in his chest, staccato panic turning his blood to ice slurry in his veins. He's locked the door. He can't breathe and he feels both like he's rushing towards the edge of a cliff at breakneck speed and as though he's frozen in amber, _but_. 

 

He's locked the door. No one needs to know.

 

 ** _I can give you something to cry about, if you'd like, you fucking waste of skin,_** Bill snarls, something very much like teeth scraping hot against the nape of his neck. Dipper grunts, surprised, as the way his insides lurch pulses a cruel  thrill of heat to his groin. Entirely without his permission, his hips giving an involuntary twitch, barely a flexing of his stomach.

 

He doesn't bother to hope Bill doesn't notice. He can practically hear the creature's slow, molasses smile, see borrowed teeth white and sharp in the anemic buzz of bar-bathroom halogen. Bill's snicker pricks the hairs on the back of Dipper's neck, sudden-sharp, like nails raked across a chalkboard.

 

 ** _Pine Tree,_** Bill whispers, sounding almost awed and completely delighted, ** _son, you are an absolute wreck. It's about time you finally did something interesting!_**

 

The scream wedged in his throat chokes him even as furious tears slip hot, humiliating down his face. Still, stubborn, he makes himself thinks of the tender way Mabel had wrapped each of his mangled fingers in gauze and tape, her lovely eyes bright but dry, thinks of the way she'd kissed each fingertip and murmured _all better now, brobot_ , and booped his nose, and he can't ask for his own sake, but he's always been able to do anything for her.

 

He manages "Please. _No_."

 

Thinks of the easy way she'd said to Stan _accident when we were making more pancakes,_ without even blinking _. My fault,_ she'd said, _I knocked him into the burner,_ she'd said. _You know how clumsy I am and yeah I took him to the urgent care while you were at Susan's,_ she'd said. _He's fine,_ she said, and knocked his battered cap off his head to prove her point.

 

His sister was a _fantastic_ liar.

 

 ** _How long do you think we have before she notices they're gone?_** Bill reaches out to prick the tip of Dipper's finger on one of six thick embroidery needles he's laid out in precise, parallel lines on Dipper's pillow. ** _She got to the kitchen knives quicker than I'd have liked. Pity._** He eyes the sleeves of Dipper's faded plaid shirt, and twists one corner of their mouth into a bleak smile. ** _I mean let's face it, your wrists look like you went at 'em with a butter knife! No artistry about it, no sense of pizazz—I could've fixed that up for you, no problem._**

 

"Please," Dipper husks out. "Bill. _Please_ don't."

 

 ** _You don't like that idea? Yeesh, everyone's a critic—okay, you know what, I really like your eyes!_** Bill spits. ** _I like your eyes so much, I think I might like to hold 'em in my—no, sorry, YOUR hands. How's THAT sound? ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?_**

 

A surge of adrenaline, a flash of—well, _him_ , except of course, he can't tell if it's Bill hitchhiking inside him, but he jams Dipper's bitten fingernails into his left eye socket regardless, just _shoves them on in there_ like it's nothing and pulls like he doesn't feel it, pulls like he's wrenching out a particularly stubborn nail.

 

Pulls out—

 

Smiles wide and pulls out—

 

Dipper abruptly curls in two and retches over the side of his bed. 

 

 ** _I could,_** Bill snarls as he dry-heaves onto the dirty carpet. His voice has always been grating, but now it balloons like the final cascade of a hellish symphony, fills every corner of Dipper's consciousness with blinding colors he couldn't name if he tried. Bill's voice _over_ fills him, swells into his grey matter like an oil-slick tidal wave, shoves at all the soft sliding plates of his skull until they _scream_ in protest, until he thinks his head might crack and split from the _pressure—_

 

 ** _I could put these through your eardrums,_** Bill deadpans and Dipper's trembling hands reach for the needles again, stroking lovingly over the lines of the steel. 

 

**_Or I could put them through your cock instead, and I could jack you off while they're shoved in there! I could make you beg for it. I could make you_ love it _. I could cross some wires in here and make it so that's the only way you can ever get off again. Do you UNDERSTAND that, kid? I OWN you now. I could do anything to you short of finally putting you out of your pathetic, cringing, fleshy misery, and here YOU are sobbing over, what—a couple of SURFACE PIERCINGS?_**

 

 ** _I thought you were made of stronger stuff than this, champ, I REALLY DID,_** he sneers and the bottom drops out of Dipper's stomach. ** _What use are you to me if you break down at every bump in the road? You gonna lose it like this every time I take your meatsuit for a test drive, huh?_**

 

**_C'mon, Ponyboy, buck up—you know what they do to horses with busted legs, right?_ **

 

A loud _crack_! and gunshots ricochet inside his skull, machine-gun clatter bright and blinding behind his eyelids.  He cringes, cowers, screws his eyes shut like it has even a chance of helping.

 

"I'm _sorry_ ," Dipper pants and he doesn't, he doesn't even know what he's sorry for, can't possibly think past the roaring static of Bill's cold fury, past the bitter metallic tang of the demon's _disappointment_ on his tongue, flooding the empty spaces between his teeth. He doesn't even really register the meaning of the word, couldn't begin to tell you what _sorry_ means, only that he knows he _is_. "Please, Bill, don't hurt me. She'll, she'll have to clean it up again, I don't want—“

 

The roar dulls into static for a handful of Dipper's frantic rabbit heartbeats.

 

And then something—heavy, something limber and warm, something alive that wasn't _quite_ an arm slipped something that wasn't _quite_ a hand around the erection he hadn't actually realized he had.

 

 ** _Deal_**.

 

Blinding pleasure shudders through his gut, too fast, too _much_. He slams his head back into the pillow with a mournful groan as not-fingers slowly stroke the hot pull of his foreskin away from the swollen head of his cock, only to drag it achingly up again. It’s exploratory, as though Bill's testing how this works. Fingers with far too many joints spider themselves nimbly around his balls in a grip just shy of being painful. Something with no joints at all takes over stroking his cock in obscene, slick pulls of soft skin over rigid flesh. It’s— _milking_ him, almost, ruthless, so tight it actually hurts, like Bill's never handled a human body long enough to quite understand all the soft parts, and very much in spite of himself, it wrenches a garbled approximation of the demon's name from the bear-trap enclosure of Dipper's clenched teeth.

 

Sick.

 

God, hes _sick_.

 

 ** _YOU RANG?_** Bill asks and does not slow—in fact, he slips another thick coil around the base of Dipper's cock and works it in cruel, counterpoint to the first. Dipper twists his head to the side frantically and sinks his teeth—blunt, weak human teeth, but formidable enough against comparably weaker human skin—deep into the meat of his own bicep, muffling a cry as the tendrils clench tighter around him. Shamefaced, flushed a charming shade of mottled red all the way down his narrow chest and into the meager thatch of dark hair across his breastbone, with his wet, blank eyes pinned on a featureless expanse of wall, so painfully careful to never look at Bill—

 

—and he finally, _finally_ gives it up. He chuffs out one last "oh, oh fuck _you_ ," and arches up into the touch. Moans deep and wrecked, helpless, like a teenager on the virgin upswing of their very first hit of E. Bill chuckles softly, mumbles **_I win_** in a slurring sort of lilt and is rewarded by the kid's jaw actually convulsing at the realization. He snaps his teeth shut hard enough to break skin, hard enough for Bill to shiver in delight at the musical scrape of veins against the sharpsharp planes of bone.

 

 ** _When was the last time you had anything but your own hand?_** Bill muses as one many-jointed digit slips down the tight, flushed expanse of pink skin just behind his balls, steady, steady down until Dipper gives an uncomfortable whine and wriggles in Bill's grip. **_Have you even managed that, yet, with those tiger stripes? I don't imagine you've found many women that really have a thing for the ex-suicidal headcase, huh. More charming on TV than it is in person, I'll bet. Boy, do you meatsacks sure LOVE to punish each other for your arbitrary chemical fluctuations! Hey, do you even manage to get your pants off before they're talking hotlines?_**

 

"What," Dipper snaps, "you didn't watch that part?"

 

 ** _Mm, I don't get cable anymore. Wasn't worth the exorbitant fees,_** Bill says noncommittally and proceeds to sink a finger to its third impossible knuckle inside of him with no warning at all. **_Oops!_**

 

Dipper yelps at the intrusion, arches back, tries to squirm away from the way it curls unfamiliar inside him. He stills, terrified, only when another coil takes smooth hold of his jaw and slips a slender end between his teeth. It pulls him away from his quarry with disquieting gentleness.

 

From here, he can see that he's taken a bloody chunk out of his own arm, though it's nothing that won't be covered by his ever-present long-sleeved shirts anyways. The tip of Bill's tendril flicks warningly against his neck at the dismissal, curls tighter in the lock of his teeth. The thing _flexes_ , writhes and then it’s—prying him open, really, pressing all the way back to the hinge of his jaw until he gags, chokes, and lets it hang slack. Muzzled, as though he's a poorly trained dog and has just a crossed a line.

 

Dipper breathes through his nose, winded, ragged _onetwothreefourfivesixseveneights_ ad nauseum until he can finally hear something past his own heartbeat.

 

 ** _Do you have any idea how many bacteria are in the human mouth, kid?  I do, because I can see LITERALLY EVERY ONE OF THEM! You'll thank me when you DON'T lose your arm to self-inflicted gangrene._** His tiny triangle form, divorced somehow from the tendrils weighing down Dipper's arms and legs, bobs just in front of Dipper's face. He watches, single eye expressionless, as a thick, bloody string of saliva slides from the corner of Dipper's mouth to slip wetly down a tentacle that doesn't technically exist. 

 

"Huh." He reaches out with one small hand—so different from the hand that was around his cock, from the one currently shoving a second finger insistently into him where Dipper is fairly sure it won't fit—and sweeps up the mess, examining it quizzically for only a moment before he vanishes between Dipper's splayed legs.

 

It's blessedly slick a moment later, as Bill works that second finger fully in. His tiny triangle self makes a couple more rounds of this delivery that Dipper's really only distantly aware of, as he’s eased open, stretched full, impossibly tight around a third finger. Then a fourth. 

 

 _Spit and blood_ , he chants to himself on stuttering repeat. _Disgustingly grateful for spit and blood, what are you doing, what are you—_

 

What he _is_ is panting like a dog, working his hips down in slow, filthy circles as invisible things pry his legs apart. He's whimpering too, like this isn't bad enough already, a low, urgent reputation of Bill's name stuck somewhere between plea and prayer. He's flat on his back, legs spread like it's his profession, getting _fingerfucked_ by a _demon_ that just _shoved his hand full of safety pins_ and his sister's head full of creeping paranoia...and he's gagging for it. He wants this.

 

( _he deserves this_ )

 

He doesn't think he's ever hated himself more in his life.

 

Bill's eye is fixed on him, half-lidded, and Dipper drags his gaze away.  Drags it down to the pleading lines of his own body, to his unbuckled jeans and his undone shirt and the swollen red marks where the coils have pulled at his flushed limbs, where he's dared to struggle. He watches the swollen arc of his own cock as he fucks rhythmic up into nothingness, watches as he rocks against the air and shudders and comes like a fucking _freight truck,_ complete with a strangled little sound he'll conveniently delete from the memory later.

 

He blanks out maybe two seconds later, white-hot and then blissful, velvet-warm nothingness, so, you know.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

 

*

 

 

 

When Mabel kicks at his door a polite five minutes later—kicks loud enough that he couldn’t ignore her, but doesn't open it, she'd learned well from navigating their awkward teen years—it’s Bill who answers.

 

"Dip?" she calls.

 

"Just taking a nap!" Technically, it's true. The kid's shivering _somewhere_ in the horrifying recesses of his own mind, which is—well, maybe not as restful as a nap, but he might as well be asleep for all he'll respond.

 

He squints one eye closed and tries to determine if It makes Pine Tree's tongue any easier to see without the aid of a mirror. 

 

"Okay," Mabel says, softly. "Could you, like...wear headphones for your nap in the future? Please?"

 

Bill pauses with the tip of the kid's tongue caught between his forefinger and thumb. He shrugs the kid's ropy shoulder. Chuckles. Slams one of the embroidery needles right through the center of the thick, twitching muscle. "Yah," Bill manages around the flood of copper that fills his borrowed mouth.

 

Okay, so it's not _exactly_ the center. Bill opens his other eye, crosses them, and realizes he was almost a centimeter off. Scowls. _Annoying_.

 

Outside the door, Shooting Star kicks her socked feet uncertainly at the baseboards and says, "I'm, I'm glad you're feeling better, though."

 

Inside his skull, Pine Tree shivers.

 

Bill tugs the needle through the kid's tongue and stifles a groan as the bite echoes in the kid's belly. It tugs an interested twitch from his spent cock and Bill palms it with the bandaged hand, considering. He closes the other eye. Squints. “Sure," he says. "Just tired, Mabes."

 

He takes hold of the kid's tongue between forefinger and thumb again, and pinches hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. 

 

This time, he doesn't miss.

 


	4. i am unruly in the stands, i am a rock on top of the sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it occurred to me as I touched up my stick-and-poke tattoo today and wrote this in my head that I might maybe have a Needle Thing?
> 
>  
> 
> ...anyways, here's wonderwall

After, Dipper stares blankly at the ceiling where Mabel’s second-favorite kitten poster had been, and counts his own heartbeats, bright, hammering pulse points of pain in his tongue, in his hand.

 

He didn't bleed out. He can still move them. If the rusted taste flooding his mouth is any indication, he didn't actually do much permanent damage at all. It'll heal. He'll be _fine_.

 

He _is_ fine.

 

He supposes he should probably be grateful for that. 

 

 

*

 

When Dipper stumbles down to the gift shop the Morning After—fifteen minutes late for his “shift," but Mabel still draws his schedule on a Lisa Frank dry erase board, so he figures he can probably spare the extra time it takes to scrub himself pink in a near-scalding shower—there’s a customer already waiting at the register. 

 

He’s sitting on the counter, actually, knocking battered Docs that look older than Dipper against the wood in creepy, creepy echo of the way Wendy used to kick her own muddied boots to the beat of whatever awful pop song Soos played on the radio _ad nauseum_ that week.

 

Dipper blinks, bleary. He's always the one to open up in the mornings, has been for years, so how did—? 

 

Man, he needs coffee. His mouth tastes like the bottom of an ashtray for reasons he doesn't want to think about, especially with the fresh ache of his mutilated tongue. His head is _killing_ him, and also there's a bearded man in a leather jacket sitting at his workspace, smoking what smells like a black-and-mild, and _how did he get in the building._

 

"Sir," Dipper says, “Sir, I’m sorry, we’re opening up a bit late today,” and the guy's snakebite scars stretch around a familiar, sharp smile. 

 

Shit.

 

“Sir? Well alright, Pine Tree, I’m glad we’ve come to an understanding! _Sir._ So polite, compared to the way you usually talk to me.I like that.” He gives a complicated twist of his body and hops neatly off the desk, landing light on his feet—for a demon wearing the body of burly man on the cusp of middle age, anyways. "Just like you seemed to like _this_ particular age-inappropriate meatbag, so! I figured you might wanna," and here he wiggles the guy's eyebrows suggestively, “ maybe take him for a test drive?"

 

The guy's got a septum ring now that he _definitely_ did not have before, a weirdly specific black one made of three delicate spirals that Dipper remembers perfectly fucking clearly from his very first high school crush. His nails are painted a chipped black, same as Dipper's prom date, a sweet, sad girl that took a cocktail of medications to rival Dipper's own, and he can practically picture them curled into the stiff cotton of his hospital gown as she'd whispered _I can't be this for you, I'm not—I’m so sorry, Dipper._

 

Dipper remembers those nails, Of course he does, because Bill has been inside his head and he's, he's fucking _altered_ the guy, replaced the shitty cargo shorts with faded black jeans, and the awful skull plugs with black stone. Gone are the dirty Vans, swapped for chunky vintage combat boots, and he recognizes the haphazardly-untied lace of the left one from the Tank Girl poster that had decorated his middle-school ceiling. 

 

He's practically tweaked the guy into Dipper's very own guilty pleasure already, so why would it be a stretch for Bill to have punched a brand-new hole in him, too?

 

_The guy sold his soul_ , Dipper has to remind himself as Bill crushes out the cherry of his cigarette on the sole of his boot. _The guy sold his soul and his lungs and it is absolutely not your fault just because you kind of have a Smoking Thing._

 

"You can't smoke in here," Dipper remembers to say, finally.

 

Bill grins. “I put it out, kid. Lighten up. I got you a present—don’t you want it?”

 

This time, his shirt is a ratty old Jack Daniels print—Dipper’s shameful favorite whiskey, though he's old enough to know to answer literally anything else when asked—and the sleeves have been cut off raggedly to expose the faded coils of some kind of plant life covering both arms to the elbow.

 

Dipper is somewhat soothed to note that the tattoos, while beautiful—lovely, delicately-rendered lines and a pale color, almost like a watercolor effect—looked a decade old at least. They almost resemble the botanical drawings he'd tried to emulate as a teenager, before giving into the reality that Mabel was the creative twin and that his hands shook like an old man's, no matter the meds he choked down twice a day.

 

"Pine Tree," Bill says, slow, like he's talking to a child, "he offered me a ride in his body. He's a junkie. He wasn’t really specific about it. I just jumped back ten years, borrowed him for a reeeeeeeal quick, _reeeeeeeal_ expensive trip to the finest tattoo artist on the face of your squalid little planet, and let him sort out the ensuing charges." He snickers. "You know, he'd actually gotten clean before that? Stopped dealing, although he had to pick it back up when he got the bills for those first-class tickets and what we did in Amsterdam, man, don’t even get me started—“

 

"Stop it," Dipper grits out. “Please, I don't want—“

 

“And just wait 'till you see his _cock_ , Pine Tree, I picked that out special for you too. I know you're kind of a size queen, but you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find men that look like this that aren’t compensating for _something_ , let alone uncircumcised ones—“

 

"Please, this isn’t—"

 

"I mean, he wasn't thrilled with the new piercings down there, either, so good job his wife's kind of a freak. You wouldn't believe how much he complained. She thinks he's trying to spice up the marriage, though. Thinks it's _sweet_."

 

"Bill," Dipper pleads. " _Please_. I really don't want some weird, brainwashed sex-puppet! Seriously! Let the guy go. Mabel's going to be down any minute."

 

It's about that moment he remembers that no, no she won't, because she's out with the girls at the mall, and Stan hadn't come home from poker at Susan's last night, meaning—

 

"Just you and me, little tree," Bill singsongs. 

 

"Please," Dipper pants and feels the familiar clenching of panic like iron bands around his ribcage. Shit, _shit_ , not now, he doesn't have time for this, _onetwothreefourfi—_

 

The guy's hands are huge and calloused and unnaturally warm. Dipper knows this because the right one is suddenly shoved between his legs, cupping him none too gently through his jeans. Dipper sucks in an abrupt, frightened breath. When had he even crossed the room? " _Please_ ," he tries again and his vision may as well be blacked for all he can focus on the man's face, jagged pulses of light obscuring everything but yellow, snake-slit eyes. Teeth.

 

"He's gonna _split you open,_ " Bill chirps as he pushes Dipper towards the register and maneuvers him up onto the counter. "Have you—no, wait, of _course_ you have." He snaps his fingers. "Senior prom, right? That sad kid getting drunk under the bleachers after your dates ditched you together?" Bill snickers. "Whatshisname. Ol' Two Pump."

 

Dipper doesn't answer. The man's blunt fingers busy themselves at his zipper, tugging it down in agonizing slow-motion as Dipper tries to breathe.

 

"But kid, look, you've never fucked a _man_ , right? Never had anything real shoved up that tight little cunt? Let me show you how it's _done,_ boy." The guy's teeth are wicked-sharp when he smiles. Wolfish. Something thrums in the pit of Dipper’s belly, low and hot and he shakes his head slow, sick. “Let me take care of you, huh?"

 

"No," he spits, venomous. “That’s—that’s not _consent_ , Bill, just because you’re wearing him! That’s not how that works! I don't even know his name!"

 

Bill cocks his head. "Brian," he says. "What _else_ do you want? His birthday? His blood type? The exact time and specifications of his death scattered across _infinite timelines_? I don't understand," he growls, and wraps one of Brian's massive paws around both of Dipper's wrists ’til his bones creak. “Would you like to know, for example that right now, he wants to fuck you so bad he'd probably take you himself, even if I let him free? Wanna know how he can’t think about anything except how your stupid, smart mouth looks stretched around his cock, all wet and warm and slick and _inviting,_ how he thinks you might choke, how he _wants to watch you choke on his dick_. Do you have any idea, kid, any idea how easy you meatbags are you reprogram if you just know where all the goddamn _buttons_ are?"

 

And then brown eyes are blinking down at him, puzzled, a frown creasing Brian’s handsome face, but he doesn’t miss a beat. Doesn’t so much as hesitate, just wraps one of those enormous hands around Dipper’s thighs and hauls him closer, so that he’s crooked in the v of Dipper’s kicking legs, pinning them wide. Dipper grunts, frantic, and tries to twist away, but Brian's grip on him won’t budge, no matter how he struggles.

 

“I don’t even like guys,” Brian growls, and the dazed look in his eyes means someone else is pulling his strings, but he grins wide, pleased, when one hand moves to undo his own belt. “But hey, sorry about all this, kid,” he says gruffly. “Can’t seem to help myself.”

 

The gift-shop sign, Dipper notes distantly as Brian crawls onto the counter and shoves two thick fingers into his mouth, forcing his jaw slack, is flipped to “open.” Anyone could walk in. 

 

“If I so much as _feel_ teeth,” he snarls and then Dipper’s trying his best (again) to remember how to breathe.

 

Anyone _could_. No one _does_.

 

 

*

 

 

”Wow, Dipper, you look _awful_!"

 

Dipper grins blearily up at Grenda and makes a concentrated effort to seem less as though the screen door is responsible for keeping him upright. He's pretty sure it doesn’t work. ”Hello to you too, _Baroness_. Marius couldn't make it?" 

 

He curls his finger tighter around his sweating bottle of Budweiser—Stan’s frugal compromise between Mabel's taste for expensive microbrews and his own decades-long affair with Pabst—and the cold seeps blessedly into the throbbing mess that is still his right hand.

 

(Mabel has taken to giving the bandages forlorn looks and touching his forehead like she's checking for fever. 

 

Dipper has taken to skulking inside doorways, until he's certain the room he's about to enter is unoccupied as a direct result, and he tries to ignore the way Stan's brow wrinkles as he watches their avoidant tango.

 

He notices, but he doesn't ask. Stan doesn't respect much, but he knows the value of secrets.)

 

Grenda punches him playfully on the opposite arm as she passes—it’s impossible not to notice how she aims for the left even though it's curled away from her, though to her credit, she doesn't look at the bandages once—and drops her backpack and helmet to the hallway floor with twin _thump_ s. She pushes her sunglasses up into an unruly mane of auburn curls, and scrunches her freckled nose at him.

 

“'Affairs of state,’" she rumbles, dry, as though it's something she's repeated a thousand times before. It probably is. "He sends his best. And some _really_ expensive presents, so that’s cool, I guess.” Her lips twist into a faint _moue_ of distaste.

 

Dipper winces. "On your birthday? Ouch."

 

Grenda shrugs, wriggling out of her heavy leather jacket and depositing it in Dipper's waiting arms. "Aw, thanks,”

 

She's wearing this strappy sort of crop top underneath, all these complicated, crisscrossing black bands sectioning out the massive, tattooed expanse of her back.  Dipper lets himself have just a moment to be jealous of the way her muscles bunch and slide, powerful beneath her browned skin. Has a bitter moment to compare it to his own pallor, marked here and there with messy, purplish lines and the blue cast of his own veins, before he mentally shakes himself and reminds himself that he _really_ should stop staring at his sister's friend like a goddamn creep. 

 

**_Well, didn't she grow up nice!_** Bill leers. **_She looks like she could break you in HALF, Pine Tree! Lay you right over her knee._**

 

Dipper ignores him. Bill cackles.

 

**_You like her skin, kid?_** Bill purrs. **_You like her tattoos? You wanna wear 'em? Your birthday's coming up soon!_**

 

Dipper swallows and _pointedly_ ignores him.

 

"You'd think I'd be used to it by now, right?" Grenda's saying. "I mean I know, I know, he's busy, he's _always_ busy, but it's just so— _rrrrggh_!” she shakes her head and tosses her hands into the air. "Whatever! Why are we standing here talking about stupid boys when we should be in there with Mabel, getting hammered?" 

 

"Is that the dulcet tones of responsible adult decisionmaking I hear?" Stan shuffles into the hallway, blessedly dressed for polite company in jeans and a thick fisherman's sweater. The effect is only somewhat ruined by the fact that he's topped the ensemble with a tattered old robe that Dipper thinks might have been once been pink. And decorated in embroidered purple coffee cups. "Man, kid, look at _you_! I swear, your muscles have got muscles. You're twice the size you were last time I saw you. You look great."

 

"Hey Mister Pines." Grenda beams down at him. "I've started teaching a new weights circuit recently. Thanks for noticing!"

 

Stan claps her on the shoulders with both hands, holds her at arm's length, looks deep into her eyes and says, sincerely, "If I ever need to con a schmuck into helping me move again, God forbid, you're first on my list."

 

She chuckles. "Break out some of the Black Label hidden in the back of your coffee cabinet, and maybe we'll talk, old man."

 

They depart for the kitchen, leaving Dipper standing awkwardly alone in the hallway, hands full of sun-warm leather that smells faintly of Grenda’s fruity shampoo, brain full of a distant buzzing-sick panic that he'd somehow _completely forgotten_ Mabel was throwing a party.

 

Had she told him? She had to have told him. He can't remember—she’d been out of the Shack, though, and—

 

She knows how he gets. She knows how he _is_. Why wouldn't she have warned him?

 

He thinks he's wearing the same hoodie he's slept in for a few nights now. He knows he hasn't brushed his hair in about three days, never mind washing it. The last meal he actually remembers, he may have possibly thrown up. Mabel keeps leaving packages of terrible sugary snacks in his backpack, so it's probably a safe bet to say he's lost weight again, and now he's going to spend the rest of the evening with his jaw wired shut in whatever pitiful echo of a smile he's capable of, while his sister—sweet, _infuriating_ Mabel, with her easy laugh and her constant blur of motion, of color, of life, the goddamn sun to his own pale moon—drinks herself into oblivion or a sugar crash, whichever comes first.

 

Why wouldn't she have _warned_ him?

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

He absconds to his room with a promise to his sister to return once his paper’s done, and drags out journal…thirteen? probably, though he’ll be the first to admit that the more recent volumes are a bit disorganized. He flips it to the latest entry, where he’s crossed out half a dozen symbols and circled the very last in red pen, a simple arcing thing translated as _protection (demons, ill intent)._

 

The sigil, on paper, looks really simple. Disarmingly simple. It's why he picked it, actually, out of the literally hundreds of various twisty shapes he'd found, because it seemed relatively easy for him to not fuck up.

 

He sketches it maybe a dozen times or so, quick pen-strokes, until he can manage it without really looking. He swipes an alcohol-soaked gauze pad over the pale skin of his thigh, just above the tan line where his bathing suit normally sits. Carefully, carefully he tips a few drops of India ink from the little glass bottle into a tiny paper cup. Chews two of Stan's Vicodin and washes them down with metallic water from the tap.

 

(He, not Bill, had pilfered the ink from Mabel's considerable store of art supplies and secreted it away with the embroidery needles while she slept on, snoring gently, unawares.

 

He's never stolen from Mabel before, not since they were about five and she'd been gifted this glow-in-the-dark stuffed puppy he'd been obsessed with. Even then, he'd barely made it through an hour of his sister's whimpering before he rescued Patches from where he'd stashed her under the plastic lip of his racecar bed and pretended she'd just been mixed in with their dirty laundry.

 

He refuses to feel guilty about it now. After, when he's finished with it, when he's _safe_ , when he's free from the crackling presence nestled in the back of his skull, he promises himself he'll tell her everything.

 

Well, okay. Maybe not _everything_.)

 

 

*

 

He'd thought it out hours earlier, as he lay in his bed After It Happened, with his hand a dull, throbbing mess and an empty set of brand-new tongue piercings, the painkillers Mabel had uncovered in Stan's dusty liquor cabinet thankfully fuzzing the edges of his vision a staticky grey. It makes sense, after everything they've seen, for him to have some permanent protection, so it's not—

 

She won't ask, is the important thing. Maybe he'll give her one to match, so she'll be safe from ever possibly feeling this same sick, icy weight in his stomach as he mops up his damp chest with a discarded Radiohead t-shirt, wads it up, and stuffs it into the depths of his laundry basket.

 

If Bill is listening, Dipper can't tell. If he has any thoughts on the matter, if Dipper's wasting his time researching anti-possession tattoos on the blue glow of his smartphone screen, he doesn't offer them aloud.

 

There's an annoying amount of _Supernatural_ fan pages he has to search through to find anything remotely legitimate—he’s never bothered with the show, although he finds a truly upsetting amount of people who've inked the ugly things on themselves anyways, apparently unaware that no legitimate warding spell would ever be surrounded in a douchey ring of tribal flame.

 

Jesus Christ, every tenth site is porn. _Weird_ porn.

 

…and Dipper possibly no longer has room to judge that anymore.

 

Finally, he's rewarded with a likely-looking set of runes on a website that looks like it was probably  last updated when Kurt Cobain was still alive. The resolution's awful, an unnecessary cluster of 8-bit alien gifs decorating the sidebar, but the glyphs look almost similar to Hebrew, if a little spikier, so he has no problem copying the symbols into the note application on his phone. Bookmarks the page for later.

 

 

*

 

 

_It's important that you stick the needle in hard enough to actually penetrate,_ the article reads. _It might be difficult if you're doing this on yourself, and are unable to see the entry point, so a good rule of thumb is that the needle should stick in deep enough to “pop” through the top layers of skin upon insertion and removal.  Load your needle with fresh ink as needed._

 

He's done as instructed, and wound the needle in thread after questionably cleaning it in rubbing alcohol and the blue-white flame of his lighter. The ink's prepared in a tiny Dixie cup on the bathroom sink, a six-inch swath of his right thigh swabbed and shaved clean as Dipper considers whether his right hand is too damaged to hold the eraser-end of a pencil in which the dull end of the needle is stuck. 

 

_Deep enough to pop. Have to penetrate the skin, likely to need touching up a few times to achieve desired results._

 

Which—what will _that_ mean? Will Bill still be able to slip inside his skin until the symbol is actually dark and bold on his leg, healed over enough to be considered part of his skin? Is it the _intent_ of the magic that matters, or the mechanics?

 

He shakes his head and dips the needle in. 

 

Right. _Deep enough to pop._

 

 

*

 

_I could make you like it_ , Bill had said. _I could cross some wires in here and make it so that’s the only way you can ever get off again._

 

It hurts. It takes the better part of forty-five minutes. 

 

After, Dipper barely has to wrap his fingers around the swell of his cock before he’s biting his lip and coming ragged, with this humiliating, bitten-off cry, right onto the mess of blood and ink. He hisses as it makes contact with throbbing flesh. It _stings._

 

He’s never come so hard in his life.

 

 

*

 

When he blinks down at his skinny leg, when his vision sorts itself out to allow him to focus on the somehow anemic pallor of skin (despite his West Coast upbringing, and his childhood familiarity with a surfboard, ** _remember when you still liked things, kid?_** ) it is very much not the symbol that he had settled on.

 

It's much lager than the spot he'd shaved, for one thing, spans the entire width of his thigh and he hadn't even felt it. He stares at the clock, eyes prickling, dry, as he registers the pulsing green **12:00—12:00—12:00**. How long has he been—?

 

Doesn't matter. Doesn't _fucking_ matter because he's done a fantastic job of making sure he stuck it in hard enough to settle the ink. Every line of the shape is a reddened, bruising, dark mess. It's orientation is indeterminate, the same shape arcing across both top and bottom, but it's obviously staring at him either way. It's familiar, of course. He shouldn't have expected anything else. He should have known better.

 

Four eyelashes and an elongated pupil, slit like a goddamn cartoon snake.

 

It sits dead center of the border, touching neither side, manic, _amused_. 

 

_Always watching._

 

_I could make you love it_ , Bill had said, and he delivers.

 

Dipper is unfairly, sickeningly hard still, somehow, and the dim remainder of his thoughts before the drugs claim him are filled with Bill's gentle laugh, warm as firelight on thick, dusty cobwebs, the fingers of his damaged hand curling around the ache between his legs. He pulls, rough, wrenching out a weak, muzzy buck of Dipper’s hips.  

 

He _wants_.

 

He's so goddamn tired.

 

**_Got your six, Pine Tree,_** Bill murmurs. **_Nighty-night!_**

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stick-and-poke tattooing, nonconsensual body modification, noncon all over the place. uh, bill borrowing some thirty-something gross crustpunk and that guy being kind of a dick


	5. pause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is just a little breather snippet where bill isn't actively torturing anyone.
> 
> sorry it's been so long, sorry this is so short, it's been some bad brain times lately

Wendy winds up being the one they send up to fetch him because, well, that's just his luck, isn't it.

 

She's taller than he is now by nearly a head, has been for years, and she’s covered nearly neck-to-toe in bright tattoos, a blessed few of which are regrettably homemade. Her wild mane of red hair is twisted into a thick braid over one shoulder, tied off at the end with a heavy-duty rubber band. She's dressed in baggy, torn jeans and a flannel shirt that she’d probably stolen from one of her brothers over a tight black tank top she definitely hadn't. Her bare toenails are painted silver.

 

She looks flustered and upset and confused and absolutely gorgeous. Of _course_ she does.

 

Wendy takes one look at him—pantsless, covered in a stinking sheen of cold sweat, pupils blown wide and empty, hands stained with ink and blood and shaking too badly to hold onto her when she tries to haul him to his feet from where he's curled, knees tucked to his thin chest, at the foot of his bed—and she closes the door behind her without a word. 

 

She doesn't try to pick him up twice, just lets him shiver in the hollow he's created against the mattress. She holds her hands out, too, like Mabel had, palms-up, the universal sign of _calm the fuck down you goddamn psycho, obviously your childhood crush isn't here to hurt you._

 

He somehow managed to clean himself up, mostly. He smells, yeah, but it’s largely of panic, not sex, and he supposes he has Bill to thank for that, too. He doesn't remember mopping up the ensuing mess, doesn't remember tucking himself away, but he's at least spared that small humiliation. His boxers are stained, but only with blood and runny ink, which. That, he can handle.

 

" _Shit_ , Dipper." She drops to her haunches in front of him, brown eyes searching his for…something. Some sign of life, maybe. Something familiar in his haggard face, his blank stare. 

 

He's not sure she finds it. He's not sure there's anything there to find. He feels dusty, hollow, like the dried exoskeleton of a long-dead beetle.

 

"Mabel is worried about you," she continues when her greeting is met with stony silence. "Honestly dude, I kinda thought she was overreacting at first, but..."

 

"Yeah." His voice creaks. It sounds rusty, unused

 

"Is that—that’s a tattoo on your leg, right? We've been waiting for you downstairs for, like, an hour and you've been—“

 

"Giving myself a tattoo alone in my bedroom. Yep." He pops the 'p' at the end of the word. He doesn't look at her. Picks a point on her decorated collarbone to stare at instead, where a tiny purple spider waves one spindly leg in greeting. She doesn't seem to notice. "Sorry," he adds lamely when he can't think of anything else to say. 

 

"Sorry? That’s—dude, don't _apologize_ to me. That's weird. And creepy." She pushes to her feet with a painful-sounding crack of her lower back, and he doesn't follow, opting to keep his eyes trained on her silvered toenails instead. The closer he looks, the worse the pedicure is, sloppy and chipping unevenly on her big toes, missing entirely from the pinkies. She clearly isn't the salon type. He very nearly smiles.

 

Wendy clears her throat. ”Mabel said you were—I, uh, I didn't know you were getting into stick-and-poke." Her voice is way too light, deliberately so, as though she's just waiting for him to stand up and act normal. Like she’s pleading for it, maybe. "Robbie still does a lot of it down in the shop. He did this, actually," and she pushes the sleeve of her flannel shirt back to expose an axe, its weathered, aged handle and chipped blade spanning the entire pink-white length of her inner forearm. "I'm sure he could, you know, give you some pointers or whatever. If you wanted to stop by? Since you're learning and all." She tries to smile. It looks strained. 

 

He's so tired.

 

"I'm not," he husks in the general direction of the carpet. "First time. Probably the last."

 

"Could've asked me," she says, even, but she's watching him with narrowed eyes now when he risks a glance up through the curtain of his dirty bangs. 

 

"I researched," he grumbles. Wendy huffs out a sudden, surprised breath and though he's still doing his level best not to look at her, he can see her move towards his desk.

 

_Stop_ , he tries but produces only a strangled noise instead. 

 

Too late.

 

"Did you? Because let me tell you, Dip, this had better not be what you were working with." Wendy's got his makeshift needle in one pale hand, glaring down at it like it's personally disappointed her. "Dude, this isn't even tattoo ink, what the _fuck_? Did you sterilize this? Do you have any idea—there’s a reason people get _licensed_ to do this, you know! Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?”

 

"Oh, look who's talking," he snarls back without really even meaning to. "Where do you think I got the idea in the first place?"

 

"I was _sixteen_!" She slams the pencil down onto Dipper's desk and he shrinks back. She's so rarely lost her temper around him, and certainly never at him—but he can see her father's scowl creasing her pretty face, her inked knuckles balled into tight fists. Fear transforms her into something feral. ”And don't you _dare_ compare that to what you're doing! I was _experimenting,_ I was _learning a craft_ and you, you’re—!” She makes a frustrated gesture in his direction with both hands, as though she's trying to encompass the whole of what's wrong with the picture. 

 

"I'm what," he spits low. "I'm _what_ , Wendy. Say it."

 

For a second, she bares her teeth and it almost seems like she might. For just a heartbeat, all the vitriol for him she's been pinning back since she and Mabel first really became friends is right there, black and glistening on her tongue. For the space between his challenge and her ragged heaving breath, she looks like she wants to tear him a new one, wants to point out how stupid, how selfish, how perfectly awful he's being and something in Dipper's gut positively thrills _yes yes YES—_

 

She sags only a moment later, though, looking far more exhausted than her twenty-five years and says, "Fine, Dipper. Fine. You want me to tell you _that_ ," and here she jabs a finger at the swollen mess of his left thigh, at the ink still oozing sluggishly where Bill had shoved the needle in far too deep, cackling at the way it made his entire leg twitch, "is the way your first foray into tattooing is supposed to go, fine. Congratufuckinglations. You win." 

 

She leaves. Doesn’t slam the door behind her because still, even with her ears tinted a furious red at the tips, she’s looking out for him. Still considering he might not be up to the confrontation a slammed door at a party might bring.

 

Still, she’s worried. About _him._

 

Dipper buries his face in his mattress and laughs and laughs and _laughs_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unsafe bodymod, bad tattoo choices, and wendy is all for punching holes in your body as long as it's for the right reasons.


	6. i am a fist amidst the hand, and i'll break it just because i can

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hahahahahahaha ~~kill me~~

Dipper had honestly, genuinely forgotten his promise to his sister.

 

It was _his_ promise, even, not one Bill had agreed to with his borrowed mouth. He'd looked her dead in the eyes and said _yeah, Mabes, sure thing,_ and he'd promptly filed it away in his mental cabinet and forgotten about it entirely. 

 

She hasn't, clearly, and he wishes (not for the first time) that his sister was even slightly as ditzy as she acted sometimes. What he wouldn't give for her to smile at him sunnily and accept his word at face value when he drops into his seat at breakfast feeling wrung out and exhausted, though he hasn’t done anything more taxing than tossing and turning in bed.  He mumbles "Good morning," mostly in the direction of his plate. 

 

She's made what look like some really excellent hashbrowns, perfectly crisp and golden, studded with fried onions and cheese and his stomach lurches somewhere up into the vicinity of his tonsils. He tries valiantly not to gag. 

 

He should have paid more attention to the slight tilt to her head, birdlike, that's so recently joined the shuttered way she studies him when she thinks he isn't looking, but he's been... _busy_ , he supposes, occupied with other things, like the pinkish stripes still crisscrossing his palms. They look unreal, almost, too bright against his dull skin, like he let Mabel scribble on him with marker.

 

He tucks the cuffs of his sweatshirt down over them before he reaches for the ketchup. He's abruptly grateful that Stan is still (somehow) an early riser because his vision is bad, but Dipper’s hands are a _mess._

 

He's so intent on cutting his breakfast into tiny bits—easier to make it look like he's eating normally that way—that it genuinely surprises him when Mabel sets her coffee cup down and says, soft, like she thinks he might bolt, "Is it, Dip?"

 

He lets his gaze drop to the tabletop again. 

 

Mabel, for all her maddening quirks, isn't stupid. She's sunny and cheerful and far too optimistic for her own good, stubborn as an ox when she's really got her teeth into something, but it doesn't make her an idiot. 

 

He sees it, sometimes, in the furl between her eyebrows, the familiar snarling up of her shoulders when she forgets to distract herself for too long. He sees an echo in her restless hands of the way his own brain spirals maddeningly around and around on itself, running circles through the inside of his skull 'til he's exhausted. 

 

He sees her tug absently at handfuls of her hair, sees her pick at the skin around her nails like she's barely aware she's doing it, her gaze fixed dully in the middle distance. He knows intimately the way the bright sting of pain bleeds buzzing tension from exhausted muscles. 

 

And following all that, he knows he's a large part of why she's tense to begin with.

 

But it stands to reason, doesn't it, that she would share _some_ element of his fucked-up chemistry—they’re twins, after all, for better or worse, even if it positively guts him to think of his sister's honey-brown wrists slit open messy in his stead.

 

(He can't. 

 

He will not, he will not picture it, he will not _think_ about it, because that will _never ever happen to her_ _as long as he has anything to say about it._ )

 

The difference, he figures, has to be in coping mechanism. She opts to just...not, far as he can tell. Just checks out of participating in her own mind's traitorous patterns, no meds necessary. She _chooses_ not to be crazy. When her hands itch, she reaches for knitting needles instead and coaxes bright sweaters and warm scarves out of the chaos.

 

He can’t figure out how she does it. 

 

He tries to ask her on more than one occasion, tries to plead with her to share the secret with him because he's just so goddamn _tired_ , but it dies on his tongue every time.

 

It probably frustrates her that he can't just turn it off the way she can. He's tried, _god_ , has he tried, but none of the pills ever really silenced the awful thing sunk deep inside him like a cancer, wrapped tight around every bit of him down to a cellular level. 

 

Oh, they dulled it, sure. Numbed him. They helped, for a given value of ‘helping.’

 

His favorites were a round, sickly-sweet orange that left him buzzing and fiercely awake, everything in him suddenly brash and explosive and ratcheted up to eleven. He liked them better even than the tiny bumps of coke he'd tested out when Mabel was at art school—god knew they were more predictable, anyways, because coke always left him cotton-mouthed and aching the next day. 

 

Besides—it’s easier to pretend when his vice comes in a rattling bottle complete with a neat little label and a copay, rather than bought off some kid with a fanny pack and an eccentric mustache.

 

It's a compromise.

 

Everything is, in the end.

 

 

*

 

 

 

He somehow drops twenty pounds without actually meaning to, and Dr. Tabitha subsequently refuses to refill his script, though she does it kindly. 

 

She wrinkles her brow at him only when he growls _I need them, please, I'll pay_ in a voice that’s probably ill-suited to a healthy seventeen-year-old, and before she's even opened her mouth to reply, he knows he's fucked up.

 

"That's not how this works, Dipper," she says, gently prying his fingers from the tail of her lab coat. "I've suggested multiple times now that you see a psychiatrist rather than depend on me to just write you scripts. You know we're not dealing with ADHD here, kiddo. You're smarter than that. Dipper—hey, _Dipper_ ," she says, wrapping warm brown fingers around his. He shrinks back. He doesn't want her to feel the way he's shaking. "Honey, I've known you and your sister since you were babies, right? It's okay. What you're going through, it happens to a lot of people. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

 

He shakes his head. “It’s—I’m fine, I am _fine_ , I just need the pills. Please. I'll be fine, if you'll just refill the prescription."

 

She sighs like she means it. "I can't do that, Dipper. I'm sorry." 

 

He makes a humiliating little noise in the very back of his throat, and tries to cover it up by snarling, "Why not?"

 

"I've seen your bloodwork, kid. My job is to do what's best for you, healthwise—and some of the stuff you're getting into doesn't mix well with prescriptions." She pulls off her latex gloves and tosses them neatly into the trash, moving to the sink to wash her hands. "You need anything actually pertaining to medical advice, you come straight to me. But you need to see a psychiatrist, like, yesterday. You know it still counts as self-medicating, the way you're doing it, right, kiddo?"

 

He bites the inside of his cheek raw and doesn't bother answering. In the back of his head, something slick and black and alien chuckles darkly. 

 

He ignores it.

 

He switches doctors the very next week. Finds (through a friend of a friend of a dealer) a tired-eyed old man coasting through the last few years of practice before his retirement, and he never probes any further when Dipper describes a set of symptoms straight out of the first paragraph of a Wikipedia entry. He only nods, gives him a little ghost of a smile and calls in the requested order to a nearby pharmacy. 

 

Dipper _adores_ him.

 

Mabel squints at him sometimes when he brings home unfamiliar bottles, but if she ever suspects he's been ducking out on therapy, suspects he’s been drugging himself to sleep, she never says a word.

 

 

*

 

 

 

It's fine. It's _fine_ , until that very morning over breakfast where she clicks her nails against her plate and says “So hey, speaking of awkward conversations, about me, uh, _checking_ you."

 

Dipper, mouth half-full of hashbrown, blinks up at her. "What?"

 

" _Dip_ ," she wheedles, "you promised. Don't make this weird, come on."

 

 

_How could it not be_ , he doesn’t ask.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

Dipper's got this love-hate relationship with the skeevy little dive bar. On the one hand, it's literally the only place in town to see a show, so, y'know, points for that. 

 

It's disgustingly authentic, lit mostly by the dim buzzing wash of neon beer signs and the occasional flare of a lighter followed by the ensuing cherry of a cigarette. It smells like sweat and cheap beer and the absolute best part is that Mabel smiles like a goddamn sunrise every time they walk into the building.

 

There's something comforting about the secondhand smoke and be damp air, the crush of too many bodies against his. It fits him snug, like a worn leather jacket, like the familiar cradle of the heavy work boots he's lived in for the last three years. 

 

He likes the place well enough, but it's packed and sweltering tonight. The whiskey ginger is a blessedly cool counterpoint to the warm air but, too quickly, he finds himself staring into the ice in the bottom of his cup.

 

"What's this band called?" He yells into Mabel's ear as she bounces along to an aggressive bass line, grinning far too widely for a song that appears to be largely about skinning the lead singer's ex-boyfriend.

 

"Trashbag," she shouts back. "Or maybe Trashbat, I couldn't understand what she was saying!" She throws back the last of her own drink, holding the empty cup out to him with a demanding little wiggle. "Aren't you _not_ supposed to be drinking on your meds?” 

 

"It's not like I'm driving," he points out. "I'm just gonna finish the one."

 

She shakes her head. "Pffffft, sure. That's what you always say. We're catching a ride back to the Shack, kay? It’ll be, like, six bucks with Uber, don’t you dare argue with me." 

 

Dipper rolls his eyes. "Fine," he grumbles. "You want another one, then?” 

 

She points a matching set of finger guns in his direction and fires. "Jack and coke, pleeeeeeease!" 

 

He shoots her a thumbs up and makes a beeline for the stairs.

 

This is the point that he realizes Mabel was right. 

 

He really shouldn't have been drinking on his meds—or at the very least, he should have actually limited himself to that first drink. The stairs are staticky and uncertain beneath his feet, his hands clutching too hard at the railing for support, and his skin feels oddly detached, crawling with a itchy sensation that he doesn't want to examine too closely.

 

_One more_ , he reminds himself firmly. _Mabel's having fun and god knows she deserves it. One drink, and then you can go home._

 

Instead—because he's made some _spectacular_ decisions tonight thus far, so why not see just how far down this particular rabbit hole goes—he finds himself staring down a line of four shots, glowing the warm honey of really cheap whiskey. 

 

"I didn't order these," he says to no one, but the bar's a whole floor up from the underground of the actual venue space, so the bartender hears him anyways, and shrugs.

 

“Yeah, no shit. He did," the guy says, and jerks a thumb at the only other occupant of the cramped space.

 

Dipper's stomach plummets.

 

"Hey," Brian says around the cigarette clamped between his teeth. He has the nerve to smile and flick Dipper a weird little salute. "Got a light?"

 

"No," Dipper snarls, even though that's a flat-out lie. "Oh, _fuck_ no. Absolutely not. I am _not_ doing this with you."

 

"Yo," Brian says softly, sounding almost hurt, and then he's sort of lumbering towards Dipper, that big body moving clumsy now without an ageless demon piloting it.

 

"Took some getting used to again, the whole walking thing," he offers when he catches Dipper staring. He takes the seat next to him and nudges one of the shot glasses towards him, insistent. "Come on, man, you know how shitty roadies get paid?" He grins. It's crooked. His canine is a little chipped. 

 

Dipper, very much in spite of himself, is almost charmed.

 

"No," Dipper snaps again as Brian reaches for his elbow. "I seriously don't have anything to say to you. I don’t—you _sold your soul to a demon_ , asshole, what did you _think_ would happen?"

 

"I didn't care," Brian says, flat. Under the scarred bartop, his knee nudges insistently into the meat of Dipper’s thigh, too hard to be an accident. “Look, it’s not much of an excuse but—I was a junkie, dude. It's not like I had a lot of options.”

 

“What do you _want_ from me,” Dipper demands, and curls his fingers around the first shot. It burns his throat as he throws it back with practiced ease. Brian’s grin creeps across his face slow as molasses. 

 

“Nothing,” he says. “Just—wanted to buy you a drink. To apologize, I guess. For—“ and here he makes a vague gesture at the whole of Dipper’s body. “I don’t usually—I’m not normally like that. I promise.”

 

Dipper grunts in something he intends to be agreement. “Okay. Fine. Can I go now?”

 

Brian chuckles. “I mean, i guess you can, but I don’t think he’s done with you.”

 

There’s no real need to clarify who he’s referring to.

 

“I just thought,” Brian says, “You might, like, want someone to be, like, i dunno— _nice_ to you for a little while.” One massive paw curls itself around Dipper’s thigh, heavy and warm and edging far too close to his groin for comfort. Dipper makes no move to dislodge it. 

 

Instead, he clears his throat. Licks his lips.

 

“What did you have in mind?” he asks.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Oh, _Pine Tree_ ,” Bill purrs with his stolen mouth. His voice isn’t his, it’s _wrecked_ , this low, husky rasp of a thing. 

 

He sounds hungry. 

 

Dipper’s fingers press too hard into the rosebuds of red-black bruises blooming all down his chest. He doesn't yelp. How, how, _how the fuck could he forget his promise_.

 

“Kid, you are something else.”

 

Turns out, he didn’t actually need to worry all that much. Mabel gets exactly two buttons into her inspection before she has to leave the room, her eyes welling up with tears.


	7. let's break it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, here we are again.
> 
> huge shoutout to everyone that's left me feedback of any sort--y'all are the real champions.

Mabel takes a second run at the inspection once she's composed herself in the next room, with all the endearing (read: exasperating) bullheadedness she can manage. 

 

When she returns, her smile is fixed and selfie-perfect, pasted on. He wonders where she learned that. Guilt, heavy as lead buckshot, settles in the pit of Dipper's belly. 

 

He doesn't want her to see, is the thing. She doesn't want to see either, that much is obvious, but this unpleasant task's fallen to _her_ now. She's stuck. She's kept her promise and kept their parents out of it which—she _shouldn’t_ , she’s still just a kid, it’s not like she’s equipped to deal with this herself. Who would be? 

 

He tries to tell her as much once, but when he asks her why she does it, she looks so heartbroken that he never presses for an answer. He just twists his faded blue-and-white hat around and around in his hands anxiously, each staggering breath coming in eight counts.

 

It does nothing to calm him.

 

"Who was it?" is all Mabel says when she reenters the room, dry-eyed, jaw set. "Do I know them?"

 

It doesn't escape his notice that she deliberately picks a gender-neutral pronoun. Normally, it would probably rankle at him—she’s always wanting to _talk about it_ , like there's anything left for either of them to say on the subject, like they didn't have this crisis already when they were fourteen—but she looks so dreadfully uncomfortable with her hands folded white-knuckled in her lap, bright spots of pink still flushed high on her cheekbones.

 

"Him," he offers. He doesn't have the heart to make her ask.

His sister blinks.

 

"Do I know _him_?" She doesn't seem phased by it. She’s smiling a tiny bit, maybe, but he'd still rather be literally anywhere else than trapped in this conversation, so he looks pointedly away from her and undoes his shirt.

 

“No,” is all he says. _I don’t really know him either,_ he does not clarify.

 

Mabel, perched on the edge of the bathtub, watches him as he folds the flannel into a neat square and starts in on his jeans. They don't make direct eye contact once he's shirtless, an unspoken pact left over from the awkward early puberty years when they'd still shared a bedroom, so Mabel zeros in immediately on the bruises littered all down his chest. She's got this look on her face while she does it like he's just run over Waddles in front of her, so for a single, blessed second she misses it. And then—

 

"Dip," she says slowly. “You—hey bro, I really, _really_ need you to tell me you asked him to do that to you."

 

 

*

 

 

 

Brian had actually, true to his word, tried to be nice. 

 

He _had_. And Dipper remembers, vaguely, Bill mentioning a wife offhand. He kind of thinks he recalls Brian's whiskey voice slurred and confused as he mumbled _I don't even like guys, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ into the flushed skin of Dipper's neck. He knows he should feel bad, logically, knows there’s probably a perfectly nice lady waiting up at home for her husband at the exact moment he drops to his knees in front of a kid ten years too young for him…but he can't quite manage to find the energy in him to care.

 

Brian had been on him the instant the bathroom door swung shut, the bartender watching them go with a long-suffering sigh.  He crowded Dipper into the only stall with a functioning lock, nudged him gently up against one graffiti'd wall, face buried in the damp skin of his collarbone, hands fumbling for the buckle of his belt.

 

They didn't kiss. He didn't even try. It stung, sort of, even if Dipper was privately thankful for it. Brian just reached up and carded one massive paw through his hair, stupidly soft like he was a newborn fawn ready to stagger to his feet and bolt soon as he could. Like he was trying to calm him. Dipper scowled, shoved at him insistently until he curled his fingers tight, until he grabbed and _pulled_.

 

" _Yes_ ," he hissed.  “Like that. Come on, _fuck_ you, I'm not that delicate."

 

**_I can make it so that's the only way you can ever get off again_ **

 

He doesn't even flinch. 

 

"I thought—?“ Brian started, but Dipper only snarled at him and he shrugged, nonplussed. "Cool, whatever. It's your party, my man."

 

He wasn't douchey about it at all, in the end. Didn't say much of anything during, actually, just slicked him up liberally with what might have been hand soap, which was...not exactly a _relief_ , but kind of a nice change anyways.

 

It still hurt. 

 

It still made him choke on his own tongue, still made him clench his fists hard enough to stamp ragged little half-moons into his palms with bitten nails. It was still half-drunk sex between two relative strangers in a filthy dive bar bathroom, hardly anything  close to tender even best-case scenario, but it was also a far fuckin' cry from the way Bill had delighted in shoving his face into the nearest available hard surface and mocking every single humiliated sound out of Dipper's mouth. 

 

When Brian finally came—“ _Yeah_ ,” he breathed into Dipper’s shoulder, “aw, fuckin’—that’s good, kid, you’re so goddamn _good_ , keep moving, Christ _don’t you dare stop_ ,” which was about the time Dipper tuned out, because how was he supposed to get off to _that_ —he sank a blistering purple circle into the the back of Dipper's neck sharp with his teeth and held on like a dog.

 

(It was just too high to be hidden by his shirt collar, too large and clear an imprint to be anything but another man's mouth. He didn't even think about it until Mabel brushed it with soft fingers the next morning and he startled, flinched away like she'd struck him.)

 

Brian had tried to do Dipper a solid, even, tried to at least drop to his knees and suck him off properly. He was _polite_ about it, for God’s sake, even if it was painfully obvious Brian had been telling the truth about his sexual preference once he managed to wrest Dipper’s jeans all the way open.

 

It wasn’t bad, exactly, just a little like he thought the guy probably ate his wife out—too much tongue and not enough friction, though Dipper admittedly didn’t have a wealth of experience to compare it to. 

 

He was enthusiastic about it at the very least. Dipper bucked up asBrian abruptly swallowed him down, down, _down_ ’til his nose brushed the curve of Dipper’s belly. He grunted, surprised, hitching up into the slick heat of it, fingers tangled tight in the loose curls of Brian’s mohawk. It was sort of greasy and a little bit gross, nothing he’d probably have voluntarily done if the man hadn’t been blowing him, but he’d barely managed to grab even a decent handful when—

 

“I swear to whatever weird fleshy god you believe in, Pine Tree, if you pull _ONE_ more time I’ll break both your thumbs in so many places you can’t pull _ANYTHING EVER AGAIN.”_

 

Brian—

 

—no, _no_ , oh shit, _not_ Brian, snake-slit eyes and a manic smile, way too wide, way too many teeth. His heart stuttered, skipped right the fuck up into the back of his throat because in the span of a breath it was _Bill_ knelt between Dipper’s splayed legs, one callused hand curled loose around his cock, grinning like he knew how easy it’d be to just twist and _pull—_

 

Bill winked lazily up at him and snapped the fingers of his free hand, chuckling when Dipper started like a spooked horse at the sound. He flinched away, tried to scramble back, but Bill moved quickly. One hand shot out, clamped around his wrist too tight to be anything but a warning.

 

“Easy there, champ. Just gonna take care of those pesky things, huh?” 

 

Brian had a bandanna tucked into his back pocket, a grimy square of cloth, stained and faded by the sun to an indeterminate grey. Bill wrinkled his nose at it, but he used it to lash Dipper’s wrists together behind his back anyway, tied them tightly in an x formation he couldn’t wriggle out of. Bill tugged experimentally at the knot when he was finished, ignoring Dipper’s struggle entirely, like he was checking the tie on a dog’s leash.

 

He couldn't, he couldn't _think_ , he couldn't hear anything past the wet thudding of his own heartbeat in his ears, past the rasp of his own breath in his lungs. He couldn’t even manage to care that a pair of strange sneakers paused outside the stall door when he groaned, poised on their toes like their owner was unsure about what was happening inside. 

 

They probably belonged to some poor drunk guy just trying to piss in peace, listening to Dipper’s pitiful whimpering now and wondering if that meant he was obligated to call for help.

 

Bill twisted his head back enough to level a glare at the guy's shins. “Hey, asshole, you wanna come in and help me with him or you wanna fuck  off?" 

 

One broad hand curled possessive around Dipper's bare, still-bruised thigh, squeezing tight over the healing tattoo as the guy sputtered out something awkward and apologetic before backing quickly out of the room. “Asshole,” Bill snarled and let Dipper shove his dick right into the back of his throat like he was trying to prove a point.

 

Brian wasn’t bad, but Bill was undoubtedly better, Bill deep-throated him like he was born to it—which he may very well have been, Dipper didn’t fucking know, he’d never met an incubus before. He screwed his Jake shut and clenched his teeth ’til they ached but still, he barely lasted fifteen seconds before he bit the inside of his cheek bloody and came into Bill’s smirking mouth.

 

“Hey,” Bill slurred, wiping the back of one tattooed hand messy across his face. “Hey, it just occurred to me—did you even ASK me if you could drive my car while I was out of town?” He tilts his head in perfect, unsettling imitation of Mabel. “Careful, Pine Tree. I wouldn’t get too attached to this meatbag.”

 

And then, sudden as it had come, the yellow gleam was gone from Brian’s eyes and Dipper slumped back against the tacky wall, boneless, heart pounding like a kick drum in his chest.

 

“Aw, _shit_ ," was the only thing Dipper managed, directed mostly to the ceiling, when he'd finally caught his breath enough to speak again.

 

"Right?" Brian agreed brightly. He punched Dipper lightly in the leg, leaned over and spat onto the floor.  Smiled. Pointed at Dipper’s crossed, reddening hands and asked, “You want me to…?”

 

Like nothing had happened at all.

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

Dipper covers one purpled wrist with the fingers of the opposite hand. He studies the hole he's just beginning to wear in the big toe of his left sock intently. His voice, when he speaks, is minute. 

 

"Yeah. I, I asked."

 

Mabel lets out a great huff of air, of something like relief. She holds out her hand. "Lemme see," she demands, with all the authority of a (slightly) elder twin. Dipper finds himself extending one wrist automatic, like a dog commanded to shake. 

 

Bill snickers. Dipper tries his level best to ignore it.

 

Mabel, for her part, doesn’t look convinced.

 

 

*

 

 

 

Barely a week after the incident in the bar, Bill makes him a necklace.

 

Man, okay, so just _thinking_ that sentence is surreal, but so is the fact that he's staring down at a braided black cord with a little white-and-gold thing dangling from it, coiled into a neat circle on his pillow. Dipper chances a glance to either side of him, but he doesn’t see anything else out of place. There’s a note attached that reads 

 

_closest I could get to a triangle without being stupidly obvious_

 

_shooting star's too smart for her own good sometimes, don'tcha think?_

 

_(better wear it or I'll be offended)_

 

It's not signed, but he'd have to be an idiot not to realize who it's from. He crumples the note in the sweating palm of one hand while he picks up the cord with the other gingerly, as though it might bite.

 

The white thing turns out to be a shark tooth, wound in what could be brass wire but, knowing Bill, is probably gold or some equally ostentatious interdimensional element he's never heard of. The tooth itself is very nearly perfect, white and triangular, the razor tip of it dipped in leaf the same color as the wire.

 

The cord is rough even in his callused hands. It's braided poorly, with no evidence of a closure, just a clumsy knot at each end to keep the whole thing from falling apart. He runs his fingers down the length of it, wincing when wiry bristles snag at his skin. When he holds it up to his neck experimentally, it only allows itself to be wrapped around his throat once, and it's almost too tight even then. It looks itchy, uncomfortable and too much like a collar. He hopes desperately (futilely) that it's supposed to be worn as a bracelet.

 

He checks himself at that. No, he hopes desperately that Bill will _die in a horrible fire tornado forever,_ but barring that...he's kind of grudgingly accepted that on his own, he's at a standstill. Just for the moment.

 

He can't tell his sister without endangering her. He can't even hint to his great uncle that something is wrong, because that'd be backtracking over ten years of _I'm fines_ and how is Stan supposed to trust anything he says after _that_?

 

Wendy is still speaking to him, albeit mostly in clipped, incomplete sentences. Her texts are polite, but without a single emoji to be found anywhere. He supposes he should probably thank her for being the one to tell Mabel about The Time Dipper Ruined Grenda's Birthday, so at least she's prepared for the bruised mess of his thigh before her inspection, but he can't quite bring himself to type out a _hey, thanks_ without choking up on anything coherent to follow it with.

 

"Are you gonna put it on, or keep trying to set it on fire with your mind?"

 

Dipper's heart climbs into his mouth at the voice, tendrils of panic already licking at his ribcage when he turns. Of course Bill is hovering just inside his own shape on the stained-glass window, his single eye crinkled in amusement. "Heya, Pine Tree. You like it?"

 

Dipper states down at the necklace in his hand and is very careful to keep his expression blank. "What is it?"

 

"That," Bill trills with a horrifying kind of glee, spreading his tiny black hands like he’s a magician presenting his final trick, "is a tooth plucked right from the mouth of the very first mama shark who looked around at her brand-new litter of pups and thought they looked like a really nice snack." 

 

Dipper blinks. "What?"

 

Bill shrugs, bricks (???) rippling with the movement. "You don't need to appreciate my poetic brilliance for this to work, kid. Just tie the damn thing around your neck."

 

Dipper doesn’t tell his hands to move, but he should be used to this by now. They move automatic to obey, pulling a tight knot to secure the cord entirely without his input. His initial observation was correct—the thing is just slightly too small, cutting into his windpipe when he moves his head wrong, rough fibers scraping at his skin like steel wool, itchy and uncomfortable and absolutely impossible to ignore.

 

He suspects that’s probably deliberate.

 

“How long do I have to wear this?” he asks, sliding a finger under it to stretch the fibers out, like it might make breathing more comfortable. It doesn’t really help much.

 

“Until I tell you not to,” Bill says sweetly. “And, you know, the fact that you even had to ask makes it me think that despite my best efforts, you still just aren’t _getting_ this. You sold your soul to me, kid! You don’t get to ask for things anymore.” And then, with a terrible little giggle and a snap of his fingers, he’s gone.

 

He doesn’t move until Mabel trudges upstairs an hour later and knocks softly on his door to call him for dinner—and even then, it’s only to close his eyes and burrow beneath his blankets.


	8. just because we can

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mabel tries. Mabel tries _really hard_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooooooo it has sure been a minute, huh? shoutout to my bro xaira-gabvi who dragged me back into this fandom, and thanks to psychosomatic86 who has been so sweet and encouraging that i literally can't even
> 
> and, y'know, hopefully the fandom isn't so dead that this is just more screaming into the void? idk.

“It'd be one thing,” Mabel says, heaving both hands into the air and collapsing—dramatically, she might add, fabulously so, she _nails_ the dive into the mattress like she's living in a cheesy eighties teen romcom, which, _awesome_ —backwards onto her bed, phone tucked carefully between one ear and shoulder, “if he was being weird, like...before, you know? Or, Dipper-weird, anyways. Mega-weird for anyone else. But this came out of _nowhere_.”  
  
“The fact that you can tell the difference never fails to astonish me,” Pacifica drawls tinny at the other end of the line, but her voice sounds a little less snotty than usual, maybe. She might actually be _concerned_ about this.  
  
Mabel is not blushing. Nope. Aaaaabsolutely not, she is just naturally, charmingly rosy-cheeked because for one thing, now is not the time to be dealing with this little train wreck, like, _at all_ and besides—Pacifica's halfway across the world, so what's the point of even wasting time on the thought?  
  
“How's the surf?” she asks instead and tries to coax her dumb, mushy brain into producing something approaching useful conversation.  
  
“Perfect,” Pacifica sighs, this chill, loose kind of exhale she'd never have been capable of as that tightly-wound, prickly little girl Mabel had first met. Mabel catches herself smiling, just a little, in the dusty, sticker-studded mirror leaned up against the facing wall. “God, Mabes, it's so—I haven't talked to my mom in a _month_ , you know? I don't even think she knows the address. I don't even think we _have_ an address.”  
  
“Sounds nice,” Mabel agrees, wistful. “I still don't get how you have the internet in a _tent_ but hey, I'm not a scientist.”  
  
“It's not exactly a tent,” Pacifica says, carefully. “More like a...shack.”  
  
“The irony. Ohhhhh god, I think it's actually killing me. This is it. Take care of Dipper and Waddles for me.” Mabel rolls onto her belly, idly flipping open her laptop.  
  
Pacifica's Facebook page is still open from yesterday which is...vaguely creepy, maybe, considering that Mabel doesn't use her Facebook for much more than changing her cover photos to the appropriate photo of a seasonally-costumed Waddles, but.  
  
It's not like she's...look, she knows how to behave, sort of, and it's not like she's harassing the girl or anything. They're friends! She doesn't even really comment on any of the stoner-intellectual statuses the blonde has been prone to lately, and she's careful to like only landscape shots and pictures of Pacifica with other people present.  
  
She knows how to do this. She is _really_ good at that weird gal-pal, quasi-flirting empowerment line she walks with her female friends. She'd had to be, right, a survival instinct born of being the only queer in a herd of _really fucking cool_ straight ladies. They had to deal with enough from boys, so _she_ sure as hell didn't want to make them uncomfortable. And she's pretty sure she had managed, for the most part, so. It had worked out okay.  
  
Pacifica certainly never seemed to remember.  
  
“As _if_ ,” Pacifica laughs. “Jesus, can you imagine? He'd kill me in my sleep.”  
  
She sucks in this sharp little breath the second it's out of her mouth and follows it immediately with “Hey, no, Mabel, that's not what I—that was super shitty, I'm sorry.”  
  
But the thing is, a year ago? A year ago, Mabel would have laughed right along with her. A year ago, the very idea of her brother managing to do anything with those pale noodle arms besides scribbling in his journals 'til his fingers smeared black with ink, would have been hilarious. Even as kids, Mabel had always been the muscle, the loudmouth, the stubborn pit bull to her brother's quiet, nervous brilliance.  
  
(Which is _totally_ okay, right, it's not—she doesn't need to be _smart_ to do her job. Dipper has that covered for the both of them, even if sometimes she idly tracked the biology majors as they slouched, tired-eyed and unkempt, towards student labs that she, realistically, had no hope of ever understanding.  
  
But she'd watch them anyways, chewing on the end of her charcoal pencil the whole time, and wonder if one of them might not light up the same as she does when she stumbles across a fascinating Wikipedia articles about some subspecies of bat she's never heard of before. Wonders if they might coo over the small, ugly baby birds she brings home sometimes, skinny-necked little trash birds with mangy feathering and black glass-bead eyes and gaping hungry beaks that never seem satiated.  
  
[Birds that most of her friends, bless them, won't even touch, though they assure her that she's a Good Person for doing it, for caring, for taking in any stray she finds, even when she knows there's not much chance she can provide more than a full belly and a warm place to die in peace.  
  
_How can I not_ , she always wants to ask, because she really, genuinely doesn't understand how someone could step over a crying, hungry little thing crumpled cold and frightened on the sidewalk and just...keep right on walking, like they hadn't noticed at all.  
  
She doesn't argue when her friends say it, though she knows very well that she isn't a good person for it—the guilt would choke her for days after, if she didn't do it.  
  
She needs it just as much as the injured party, doesn't she? It's one of the few times when she feels as though there is any point to her at all besides maybe serving as a storage space for all the enthusiasm and energy that Dipper seems so completely empty of.]  
  
Probably they have better things to think about, though, big global problems to solve. And it's super ridiculous to even compare her armchair intellect to a real actual science major with, like, a degree and grown-up job prospects, so.  
  
No point to wondering about it, right?)  
  
She even thought it was stupid back when they were sixteen and Dip—or the hollow-eyed thing wearing his skin, anyways—had first been committed.  
  
She absolutely _hated_ that there was no disctinction with the diagnosis, no clear-cut line between posing a threat to himself and posing a threat to others. Mabel loathed even hearing it mentioned in her vicinity, because...yeah, okay. She couldn't really deny that Dipper should absolutely not be left to his own devices, but she knew in her goddam marrow, knew like she knows— fuck,  
like she knows water is wet and the sky is always blue behind the clouds, that her brother would never hurt her. Never even attempt to hurt anyone else. His violence is strictly contained, spiraling blackly inwards, utterly incapable of leaving the well-worn paths traveled along he confines of his hunched, too-wiry body.  
  
Dipper is going to self-destruct long before he brings anyone down with him, and she doesn't understand why she seems to be the only person that sees it. Even when he gets into fights—not often, but enough that she's gotten upsettingly proficient with her butterfly bandaging, easy with her lies about sports her brother doesn't play—he never swings first.  
  
It's also possible he just likes getting punched in the face, but that's not the point here, probably.  
  
“Mabel?”  
  
(Mabel had kissed her only once, when they were both fourteen and stupid buzzed off a bottle of champagne stolen from the Northwest cellar, just leaned over and kissed her dumb smirking mouth while Ryan Reynolds macked on some blonde lady onscreen, and Pacifica had made this noise like she'd been slapped, jerked back, said “ _Don't_ , I, I'm not—” in the same grey murmur, sounding blurry and faraway and so, so sad.)  
  
“Yo, heeeeey, I'm here,” she chirps, maybe a little too loudly. It's kinda hard to tell through the lingering purple static of the memory. “Sorry, I was thinking. You know how hard it is for me to multitask.”  
  
“ _Mabel_ ,” and woah there, danger Will Robinson, that's the full cold Northwest voice absolutely dripping with exasperation she's being treated to. And then, softer, once she catches herself, “Don't do that, hon. Talk to me.”  
  
There's the familiar rasp-and-click of her lighter, a deep, slow drag. Mabel vaguely wishes she'd thought to stop by the dispensary on the drive home, even if Stan still gets all twitchy about it when she does. He never really says anything the few times she does it, just eyes her, wary, as she folds herself into lotus position in a patch of sunlight with a packed bowl. She'll grant that it's probably really, really hard to unlearn decades of hiding the stuff after all, because she'll eat her headband if Stan hasn't sold weed at least _once_ in his sketchy career.  
  
She sighs along as Pacifica exhales what's probably a really impressive lungful for someone so tiny. She knows this not because they've ever smoked together, but because Pacifica is the entirely unfair kind of person that would never cough. She's just...she's that effortless unreal magazine cool where glassy, bloodshot eyes and a mane of unwashed, sea-salt tangles somehow fail to make her look unappealing at all.  
  
She doesn't wear makeup and of course she's got these killer, fashionably-unkempt eyebrows that Mabel couldn't reproduce if her life depended on it. The only jewelry she ever wears is a single silver ring in her left nostril, a handful of matching studs scattered along the sun-browned shells of her ears, and a braided set of fisherman's bracelets around one wrist. They're the same ones Mabel made her three years prior when she'd first decided to stuff her entire miserable life into a backpack and see how far she could get before her parents froze the accounts. The bracelets have faded to a kind of grey-blue now, a little dirty with wear.  
  
Hell, Pacifica is living on the _beach_ in _Hawaii_ , smoking herself into some kind of surfing-based nirvana, probably hooking up with cute guys left and right in her little boho-chic drug den and the worst part is, Mabel can't even laugh at it. It doesn't even seem pretentious, she's so earnest about the whole thing, though she's straight, absurdly, out of an Urban Outfitters ad. Out of someone's goddamn Tumblr aesthetic.  
  
...and Mabel manages a _gift_ _shop_.  
  
“Dipper's got a....guy. Thing. A guy-thing. And I don't, I don't know if it's related? I don't even know how long he's been seeing him, but— “  
  
“You're worried it's the guy?” Mabel can practically picture the minute wrinkle between Pacifica's eyebrows that would accompany the question. “Like...you think he...?”  
  
She doesn't say it, which, absurdly, irritates Mabel. It shouldn't, it really shouldn't, especially since she knows intimately how at odds Pacifica is with actual tact. “I don't know,” she mutters. “Dipper said...I mean I asked, but it's not like he hasn't lied to me before.”  
  
( _I love you_ , he'd said to her the day he'd tried to leave her forever, the very goddamn morning as she was leaving for school, his crooked little smile curling up at her over the rim of his coffee cup. He hadn't had the decency to mention, then, that it was intended to be the last one she ever saw.  
  
He'd been dressed in his pajamas, she remembers vividly, grey sweatpants with a hole in one knee and this old Area 51 shirt she'd bought him. He'd been home “sick,” though he'd barely bothered to fake a fever and Mom hadn't noticed at all, half-eyeing the traffic app on her phone as her drive to work crawled steadily upwards. She had only pressed a placating hand to his forehead and nodded when he'd asked to skip school.  
  
_I love you_ , he had said and then, bizzarely, as she pulled the door closed behind her, _everything's gonna be okay now._  
  
It had been the last time she'd seen Dipper before the hospital and the twelve hours of touch-and-go status updates from a rotation of nurses as she stared blankly at the ceiling tiles and tried to focus on anything except _self_ - _inflicted_ and _high-risk_ and the dull, coppery nausea that had taken up residence in the back of her throat.  
  
It had also been the last time she had seen him wear that particular t-shirt, because Mabel never _had_ been able to get the bloodstains out entirely.  
  
_I love you._ That asshole.)  
  
“I mean...why don't you just meet the guy?” Pacifica asks. “Judge for yourself if he's worthy of Dipper's maidenhood.”  
  
“First off, _ew_ ,” Mabel says. “And second and third, also ew, please do not use that combination of words in my earshot _ever again_.”  
  
Pacifica laughs, low in her throat. “Look, just let Stan take a crack at the dude. I bet he'll scare him off if he's doing something shady. He's got, like a sixth sense for that shit.”  
  
Which is...not a bad idea actually, come to think of it.  
  
“ _Maidenhood_ ,” Pacifica says again, this time _sotto voce,_ and Mabel dissolves into giggles.  
  
  
*  
  
That's how she finds herself standing in the front doorway, anyways, a wide, welcoming grin frozen on her face, staring down—no, staring _up at_ , and Mabel's not a small girl—a guy who looks like he might be here to have a grim, hushed conversation with Stan about some deal gone wrong in New Mexico, rather than joining them for dinner.  
  
He is _huge , _for one thing, though she's a little relieved to note that he doesn't actually look like he's seen the inside of a gym recently. He's built like a tank, albeit one that enjoys its fair share of burgers and shitty beer.  
  
His tattoos don't quite mask the thick cording of muscle on what she can see of his arms, these lovely floral patterns that don't seem to mesh right with the fact that he otherwise looks like he could be a bouncer. Security, maybe? He stands kind of uncomfortably close to her and doesn't seem to notice the way he looms, so it's _something_ where that bulk's got to be a factor.  
  
“Hi,” he rumbles at her. His beard kind of quirks into a smile, though it's difficult to see in the faded yellow of the front porch light. “Can I come in?”  
  
“Sure,” she says, numb. She steps aside to let him pass.  
  
She notes, too, that he pauses in the doorway, looking first to the sneakers jumbled by the bottom step and then to her socked feet before toeing his own clunky boots off, which, you know, points for manners.  
  
But the guy is giant and bearded and actually pretty hot, okay, fine, she'll give her brother that one, but also? Despite the fact that he somehow manages to pull off a septum ring, he can't possibly be a day under thirty. There's this sparse flecking of grey at his temples and in his beard  
like a Hollywood werewolf, like he actually has some memory of Kurt Cobain's death, or Princess Di's, like he is _way the fuck too old for Dipper._ “I'm Mabel,” she says, sticking out one hand, still encased in an oven mitt shaped like a shark. “So...what year did you graduate high school?”  
  
He glances down at it and then back up at her, looking kind of faintly amused, but he shakes the mitt firmly enough. “I didn't graduate, actually,” he says, which is absolutely not helpful at all. “Nice to meet you, Mabel. I'm Brian. Is Dipper around?”  
  
What she _wants_ to do is squeeze the guy's fingers till he cries. She _wants_ to hear the bones creak against one another and twist his wrist back until he whimpers. She wants to get the guy down on the ground and demand _what the fuck is wrong with you, how can you possibly look at Dipper and want to crush him any more than he's been crushed already? You're kicking a dog that adores you because it's forgotten there's any other option,_ she wants to spit at him _._ She wants to hurt him. She wants to scare him off. She wants to slam the door in his face and pretend she'd never seen his, never seen a blatant walking indication, reeking of Axe deodorant and cigarette smoke, that her brother is not o-fucking- _kay._  
  
How Dipper can possibly expect this to go well is utterly beyond her.  
  
What she does, though, is point him to the dining room and watch her brother's face shift into something neutral and carefully blank as Brian ducks down to drop a kiss against the curls matted to his forehead. What she does is ball her hands into fists as she watches him cringe away from the touch like it burns him, which is almost enough she needs to kick the guy the fuck out.  
  
Except then Brian slides one of those big inked hands around the sharp angle of Dipper's jaw, tugs him close and murmurs something too soft for her to hear. Smiles at Dipper, this sweet, warm, fond thing and the tension just...drains right out of her brother, like someone had pulled his plug. He leans into the touch, sags almost in relief, and there's even the faint gleam of teeth in the weary grin Brian receives in response.  
  
Which—huh.  
  
Interesting.  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> bill is a bag of dicks


End file.
